


This is Not a Nice Story

by with_a_kiss



Category: Homestuck
Genre: (normalized) filial cannibalism, Age Difference, Emotional Abuse, Multi, Original Character Death(s), Physical Abuse, Psychological Horror, Sexual Violence, Xenobiology, casual discussion of slavery, internalized ableism, yo dawg i heard you like epithets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2012-08-09
Packaged: 2017-11-02 14:18:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 11
Words: 86,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/with_a_kiss/pseuds/with_a_kiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"<em>So adult trolls have a very different relation with kids than adult humans - often malign or parasitic. That said, I want some adult-troll/kid-troll noncon.</em>"</p><p>ok.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Warning for extreme sexual, physical, and emotional violence that is non-consensual._
> 
> That has been my catch-all warning for this, but there are more in the tags. If you want the version with footnotes and my commentary plastered all over, it was originally posted for a Homesmut prompt - http://homesmut.livejournal.com/5183.html?thread=3970623#t3970623
> 
> For what it is worth, this is set pre-canon (give or take, it started in earlyish 2011) so Karkat _does_ make it out the other side. But that is the only assurance I can really offer.

Karkat glowers at the cave wall. “Yeah, this is really fucking impressive,” he says.

“Shut up.”

“I’m in absolute nooksucking awe at what a excellent use this was of my time. Thank you, Ladeci, for dragging me through a cave the approximate shape and stench of the inside of a razorworm’s rectum to show me this shit stained excuse for a damaged wiggler party room.”

Ladeci worries at his lip with his crooked fang. “Uh, there aren’t any damaged wigglers,” he says, and Karkat can't believe what an idiot he is.

“I can’t believe what an idiot you are,” Karkat says. “Of course there’s no damaged wigglers! They get culled! That’s my fucking point! This place is as empty as the rotted hole between your horns!”

“Oh, hey, fuck you.” Ladeci snarls at Karkat. Snarls more, anyhow. His angled right tooth normally pushes the side of his lips apart, making him look pissed at the world even when he’s smiling. Karkat hates his stupid face, it makes Karkat look like the nice one. “You were the one who didn’t believe I killed a musclebeast! I just said I’d show you.”

Karkat kicks the dead-musclebeast-free corner. “Well, case closed and suspect swung on this evidence. What, did you bump into a sleeping one and think you gave it an aneurysm from how terrible you are?” 

“Or, maybe something ate it?” 

Karkat looks down. There are, he notices, deep scraping sludge marks leading away from the end of the cave. They could be anything. Maybe, okay, he’ll admit it, an injured musclebeast. Maybe something... bigger. Hungrier.

“That’s bullshit,” Karkat says. “It’s too bad there _aren’t_ any damaged wigglers here, because maybe they would fall for your pathetic excuses.” He tries to out-scowl Ladeci, who is staring hopefully at the corner in case a musclebeast carcass should suddenly appear. He fails. “Come on,” Karkat says. “It’s going to be dawn soon. Let’s get out of here.”

Karkat finds caves creepy as hell, despite all those “return to your grubself” psych quackery claims that they’re supposed to be comforting. He avoids them when he can, which is pretty much always unless, like now, his ego gets the best of him. Unfortunately, that means he has no clue how to navigate in one, and he’s stuck trusting Ladeci to lead them back to the entrance. And Ladeci isn’t paying enough attention, in Karkat’s opinion. He’s running a thumb over the relish green swirls on his shirt. He’s humming a famous classical rap. He’s staring at Karkat like he’s not sure what language Karkat is yelling at him in. He’s pausing to glance into other cave pathways, probably still looking for his imaginary musclebeast.

The cave’s starting to lighten, which means they’re nearing the entrance and, fuck!, that daylight is sooner than Karkat thought. They’ll have to hurry to make it back to the lawnring.

“You are the worst oozing flap-rash of a neighbor on this entire goddamned planet,” Karkat seethes.

“you think that you won but you ain’t even stunned me bitch you want to shun me that’s,” Ladeci... well, it would take someone more charitable than Karkat to call it “rapping.” Mutters, then.

“remember how many of them there are. They get everywhere,” says someone who isn’t either of them.

Karkat grabs Ladeci’s arm and yanks him against the nearest cave wall. It’s not cover, but they need a plan... 

“Uh, what are you,” Ladeci says, and Karkat clamps a hand over his mouth. 

“Listen,” Karkat hisses.

“the creepy little bastards. No one actually gives a shit.” The voice is muffled from travelling down the cave, but Karkat can still hear the deep resonance it has. He’s heard a similar tone maybe twice in his life, overseers or “quality checks” and god knows how the the hell he survived those, and after that has heard it only from safely behind his movie screen. 

“We cannot simply ignore the security risk,” says another voice, this one deeper than the first but with the same telling vibration. There’s more than one of them. 

Ladeci’s eternal sneer is dropping into horror. He’s hearing the same thing Karkat is. 

Adults.

“Is there another way out of here?” Karkat asks, as quietly as he can.

“I, uh. I don’t know.”

“Well, we better fucking hope so,” Karkat says. He shoves Ladeci back in the direction they came. “We need somewhere to hide until they leave.”

Ladeci’s got a hand wrapped in the green of his sign, like he’s holding onto himself. Karkat says, “Yeah, you’re still there, asshole,” but his anger doesn’t feel real. He doesn’t know if it’s pity or terror, but Karkat suddenly wants to grab Ladeci’s hand and hold on as they sneak away. He doesn’t, though. Ladeci’s free fingertips are drifting across the cave wall, and maybe that’s how he’s navigating? Fuck, Karkat knows shit all about caves.

“All right, all right, if it’ll get you to stop complaining,” says adult no. 1, and the voice is getting _louder_. Moving _closer_.

Karkat glances back and sees a dark shadow against the navy blue opening of the tunnel. “Run!” he shouts, pushing Ladeci forward. The other troll stumbles but...

“Yeah, it’s way too late for that.” The words are lilted and syrup thick, and Karkat hadn’t realized how badly his movie speakers suck until hearing an adult speak up close. But that really... that really doesn’t matter right now. There’s a buzzing sensation in his horns and backmost teeth, and he hangs out with enough asshole psychics to know what’s coming...

Karkat’s feet are yanked out from under him. He falls hard to the cave’s stone floor and hears Ladeci thump down beside him. A force starts to pull him backwards by his ankles. Karkat grabs his sickle and catches it on a stone, but the shitty blade breaks under tension and snaps out of his hands. Then he tries to grip the ground with his fingertips, but he’s ripped painfully away. He thrashes wildly, which doesn’t accomplish anything except giving him a glimpse of the adult troll reeling them in, pulling on an invisible rope. She’s grinning as she hauls them closer.

Ladeci is still trying to hold onto the floor. There are ten fresh streaks of relish green stretching up the tunnel. Now Karkat does reach over and grab one of his hands, and Ladeci looks at him over green stained cheeks. Karkat himself isn’t crying. He’s spent sweeps training himself not to, not under any circumstances. It doesn’t matter anymore, but the idea that even imminent death isn’t breaking him is a sort of victory. “I’m sorry,” Karkat says, and because there’s still time to curse out paradox space for his last words, he adds magnanimously, “I believed you about the musclebeast, I was just being an asshole.”

A tear rolls into one of Ladeci’s nostrils, and he has to snort it away. “Uh, no,” he says. “No, you were right, I made it up.” His hand grips harder against Karkat’s palm.

“I fucking knew it, you useless shitbrained nookstain! Fuck you! You got us fucking killed!” 

“I wanted you to like me!” Ladeci wails.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!” Karkat remembers his decision a few seconds ago to meet his death being a good friend, at least. Why is he is so bad at this? I do like you, that’s what he should say, even if Ladeci is a stupid lying cave-humping ugly-fanged weirdo who just guaranteed Karkat’s messy death. You’re my pity friend, of course I like you. And maybe he would have got that out, but the ground suddenly stops sliding painfully underneath him.

Karkat twists halfway and sees that he’s close enough to reach over and touch the adult, if he wants. Yeah, right. She’s dressed in a black military bodysuit, and her horns curl back by her ears. Her sign is green, slightly higher than Ladeci’s on the hemospectrum. She stares back at them, amused.

“So, how many other kids are hiding in the tunnels?” she says.

“Twenty-five,” Karkat says, hoping twenty-five is a big enough number to worry her. At least about the difficulty of catching them all. Maybe they could be useful, volunteer to help. “We’re Flarping. There’s a Flarp game. We’re Flarpers.”

“Really?” Her smile doesn’t shift. “Then I’d better kill you two quickly, so I can start clearing this place out.”

“No!” shouts Ladeci. “It’s just us. There’s no one else. I promise. Please don’t kill us now.”

“Well,” she says, smiling wider. Her teeth are really long. “Okay. If you'd rather.” She turns around and walks away, the two young trolls bouncing along after her on psychic thread. 

“You idiot,” Karkat says. “She was going to kill us _quickly_.”

“Oh, shut up. I hate you.”

“Make up your fucking mind.”

They stop again in a wide tunnel several turns from the cave’s entrance. It’s bright with reflected pre-dawn light. There’s no way they’d be able to run home, even if they managed to escape. Karkat tries to untangle himself enough to sit up, but whatever psychic thing she’s doing, it’s like moving through sopor slime.

“Toss me the cuffs,” she says.

“I still don’t understand why you’re dragging this out,” someone answers, but it’s followed by the sound of metal landing in a hand.

Then she’s back, yanking on the invisible rope. Up, this time. “Okay, you two. Kneel.” Karkat finds something in himself to resist, or at least not respond right away. Maybe he’s just not able to. But then she says, “Do you think I can’t make you?” and no, he doesn’t, and he doesn’t want to give her a chance to prove otherwise. 

He clambers up to his knees. It’s painful. The tunnel was long and rocky, and his entire body is one giant bruise in progress. The adult pulls his arms roughly behind his back and secures them hand to elbow, and it’s almost enough to make Karkat lose his balance. Ladeci is swaying beside him, staring slack-faced at the other adult, this one a male with a blue sign. The man’s glaring at them like they’re vermin he’s been inexplicably asked not to stomp under his boot. Just quite yet. 

“There.” The woman finishes cuffing Karkat and walks back to her partner. She gestures expansively at them, wide grinned. “Dinner and entertainment. The question is only... which is which?” 

The man gives her a stony look Karkat doesn’t try to read. It’s taking enough focus not to fall over. The woman shrugs. “Better than rations, trust me. They’re _fresh_. It’s one of the only perks of doing recon on this shithole.”

“Don’t speak of the Homeworld in that tone,” says the man, but _his_ tone suggests he’s saying it out of habit, not because he actually cares. He gives Karkat and Ladeci a more considering type of stare. After a moment, he puts down the gray packet he’s holding. Karkat can make out enough of the script on it know it contains a prepared military meal, some flavor of dried grubloaf.

“Fuck,” Karkat says. It’s barely a whisper, but it catches the man’s attention. His focus shifts entirely to Karkat, and it feels like the air has been sucked out of the cave.

“What color blood does that one have?” he says, pointing to Karkat’s gray sign.

“Red,” says the female adult, so confidently that Karkat flinches. “I felt how warm his skin was when I cuffed him. Definitely a red blood.” 

“I refuse to believe you can tell simply from _touch_ ,” the man says.

She shrugs. “You need to feel up more people, Dien. But I’ll prove it. Hey, kid.”

Karkat, busy fighting the sense of his world slipping away, is shocked back into awareness by a sharp pain across one of his horns. The woman’s holding one hand to her side like it contains an invisible whip. “Hey, kid,” she repeats. “What color’s your blood?”

“It’s none of your fucking business,” Karkat snarls out of reflex, but his eyes immediately go wide when he realizes what he did. He stutters out, “Oh god, oh god, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, oh god.”

The male adult’s face twists in fury, but the woman laughs. “Don’t worry,” she says to her partner. “It’s easy enough to find out.” She pulls out a ten inch blade and walks towards the young trolls.

Abscond, Karkat thinks. Abscond, abscond, abscond, but his legs don’t seem to be responding. He tries to even lean away, but the arm cuffs stretch the muscles in his shoulders and chest tight. He fights them in panic, struggling back and forth ineffectually, until he topples sideways into Ladeci.

Ladeci holds his balance, supporting them both. He’s quiet and still, barely breathing, and his eyes are focused on a far wall. It’s like he’s hoping to remain unnoticed while Karkat diverts attention by thrashing around like a loamsnake with its limbs torn off. Asshole, but Karkat’s pretty sure he’d be doing the same if Ladeci was the one being a fucking idiot. Karkat doesn't know what the fuck is wrong with himself, he deserves to get culled first. For a brief, black moment, Karkat feels a hate stronger than anything before, strong enough to wash away everything else, even fear. He’s not sure which of them it’s directed at.

Then the adult’s boots scuff beside him, and the moment drains away. He looks up. The early daylight reflects off her blade, and it’s so bright it hurts.

“It’s red,” Karkat says. His voice cracks on the word, even if it’s still functionally a lie. “My blood. It’s red, it’s red, oh god, I’m sorry, you’re right.”

At Karkat’s shoulder, Ladeci tenses and pulls away as much as he’s able to. Karkat keeps his gaze fixed downward on the rough cave floor. It’s bad enough to imagine Ladeci’s expression, disgust over-writing his terror. And he thinks Karkat’s just a caste jumping asshole, he doesn’t even fucking _know_...

“Told you!” she shouts back to the man.

He grunts. “Your prediction was a safe one. What else would try to hide behind gray?” 

“You’d be surprised,” she says. “The anons are full of blue bloods and, hah!, sea trolls. People who don’t have to worry about being reminded of their place.” The knife blinks back into her index, and Karkat relaxes slightly. He can’t help it, although he’s just as doomed as a second ago. Even certain death is less terrifying than being exposed.

“There are very few topics I wish to discuss less,” the man all but spits. He pauses, then says, “But I don’t care much for red bloods. I find them bitter.”

Of course we’re fucking bitter, Karkat seethes to himself. And we don’t care much for you pompus assholes either. So he’s bewildered when the female adult says, “Good choice!” and pulls Ladeci forward with her psychic rope trick.

Ladeci manages to stagger to his feet for a few steps, but she doesn’t bring him far, just tossing him down in front of the other adult for inspection. The man lifts him by the arm cuffs and sniffs at his neck. Ladeci stares pleadingly at Karkat, the gulf between their blood colors apparently forgotten. But Karkat, who is desperately fighting the realization of what the adults meant by _bitter_ , can’t help him.

The man rips the sleeve off Ladeci’s shirt in one smooth motion. He runs the side of his thumb down Ladeci’s shoulder until, finding a spot that interests him, he leans in and tears out a chunk of Ladeci’s arm with his teeth.

Ladeci shouts. Karkat, stupid stupid stupid, says “No!” and is rewarded by something slamming hard into his face. It is, he’s slow to realize, the ground. He must have launched himself forward. He struggles to get back into a kneeling position.

On the other side of the cave, the woman is looking at Karkat curiously. The man’s face is twisted in distaste, relish green spilling from his lips. He forces himself to swallow. “Disgusting!” he says, sounding betrayed. Ladeci is sprawled on the floor, sobbing. 

The woman thwaps the other adult on the shoulder. “Well, yeah, look at them. They’re sweeps out of the pupal stage. I’m amazed you never starved to death, Dien, if you don’t know this.”

“I’m not in the habit of preparing my own food,” he says, and Karkat’s not sure if he’s bragging or embarrassed or just carefully choosing the words most likely to make Karkat lose his mind. He can’t keep listening to this. Maybe he should get to his feet and run at them, attack with nothing available but his fangs, get them to kill him _now_. 

But he doesn’t. He’s too much of a useless fucking coward. The adults drag Ladeci to a portable mechanic’s furnace, and Ladeci _lets_ them, dangling limp from the male’s arms as his partner talks about temperature settings. They are going to roast Ladeci and _eat him_ , and Ladeci isn’t even going to struggle. He’s given up.

But hasn’t Karkat? He’s not fighting to do anything but stay on his knees, stay where that bitch fucking put him. There’s no reason Karkat isn’t the one about to be cooked for supper except they weren’t in the mood for something _bitter_.

He would show them bitter if they tried it, he would --

\-- oh fuck, he’s slipping again, his arms are wrenched too far back, he can’t keep his balance --

\-- he would stay exactly where they put him, while a few yards away the adult is digging her thumb into hole in Ladeci’s arm. Ladeci whimpers, but doesn’t move. The adult raises her thumb and licks it, frowning thoughtfully.

“He’ll be okay,” she says. “But it’s better if you tenderize them.”

Karkat doesn’t understand what that means. Apparently, neither does her partner, because she says, “Here, I’ll show you,” and gestures for him to drop Ladeci. Ladeci lands like a thing already dead. His weight is on his wounded shoulder, but he doesn’t even move to roll off it. He stays exactly where they put him. 

It’s not going to save him.

It’s not going to save Karkat either.

The adult mimes pulling a lasso around Ladeci’s chest. She swings her arm back and forth, as if she needs the momentum, and then throws her arm, yanking hard. Ladeci flies high into the nearest wall, hard enough to rattle stone. Further into the cave, Karkat would have been worried. Not worried. Hoping. He would have been hoping for a cave-in, but near the mouth every tunnel is solid. 

Before gravity can take Ladeci, the adult pulls him back, flinging him across to the floor. Ladeci’s making a low pitched whine. One of his legs is bent oddly -- Karkat tries to tell himself it’s just how he’s sprawled -- and green dribbles from his mouth. When he swallows some of it, Karkat sees that his crooked fang has been knocked out.

The adult is providing commentary. “At that age, anything heavy will work to soften the bones,” she says. “your hammers would do it better. I just think this is more fun.”

She throws up her arm. Ladeci swings up into the ceiling, falls back down. His head lolls towards Karkat, and the stone’s left deep scratches across his cheek and forehead. When his eyes jerk towards Karkat’s face, Karkat shudders. 

Karkat wants to say something to him. “This is all your fault!” or “Why the fuck didn’t you let her kill us!” or “It’ll be over soon.” He hopes so. He hopes it will be over soon. Or maybe something comforting, like “Hey, this is probably still better than being cooked alive!”

The psychic rope yanks him away, smashing him headfirst into the far wall of the tunnel. There’s a loud, extended cracking noise, and Karkat has no idea what it is until Ladeci slides back to the ground and half of a horn rolls to a stop an arms length away from him. There’s a moment of complete silence, and Ladeci’s body seems to stiffen from the bottom up, from his feet to his hips to his shoulders to his face, which twists in on itself, not even an emotion anymore.... and then he drags in a gasp of air and screams.

It’s like nothing Karkat’s heard before, high pitched and warbling and it _doesn’t stop_. It’s not a sound he even knew someone could make. More like a wounded prey animal, shrieking its distress into the night.

Pretty fucking accurate, then.

Karkat curls forward, letting his head and shoulders hang. He can’t watch this. He stares at his pants instead. They’re filthy, covered in dust and cave grime and tiny splattered drops of green. He should have discarded them a while ago: the dark gray is starting to fade at the knees, there’s a tiny hole in one pocket, and Karkat’s fingers clench into his palms the way they can’t close around the side of his head and tear out his ears because Ladeci is _still fucking screaming_.

The adults can’t take it either. One of them, anyway. There’s a shout, “If you don’t silence him, I will do it myself!”

“Oh, fine,” says the woman. She’s closer than Karkat had thought, and his head jerks up in alarm. She’s leaning against the wall, her hands knotting something complex into her psychic rope, her eyes fixated across the the tunnel. Karkat can’t bring himself to look at Ladeci, but there’s a grin across her face. She’s enjoying this, obviously, but there’s something more there Karkat’s not entirely getting. Her nostrils flare as Ladeci starts screaming again after a brief choked breath. One of her fangs is pressed against the softer inside of her lips. 

She looks... hungry, Karkat thinks, but that makes no fucking sense, because then why is she hesitating to finish him off and shove him into her ad-hoc oven.

“Zhaleya!” the man yells. 

“Yeah, yeah, okay.” She pushes away from the wall and stalks slowly across the tunnel. When she gets to the crumpled pile of what remains of Ladeci, she reaches down and yanks him up by his broken horn. He doesn’t even seem to notice, like there’s no level of _pain_ above the one he’s already found. The adult slides something invisible around his throat and...

 _No_. Karkat shuts his eyes as tightly as he can manage. The screaming tapers off in slow, choked jumps. Then there’s a muffled, squelching _pop_ and. _No_. it finally stops entirely. The cave is flooded with silence, but there’s no relief in it. It’s a suffocating silence, a silence that rings in Karkat’s ears louder than the screaming did.

He’s glad Ladeci’s dead. _No._ He is. He’s fucking ecstatic for Ladeci that it’s over, and whatever happens next at least it’s not his problem. But there’s a change in the quality of panic that’s been overwhelming Karkat since he heard that first resonant voice. With Ladeci gone, Karkat feels hollow, and despair solidifies around him like black stone.

Because there are two adult trolls in this tunnel, and now Karkat’s alone with them.


	2. Chapter 2

Karkat thinks he's going to start screaming himself after every footstep or scrape of stone he hears. He has to open his eyes. 

The two adults have brought the body back to their equipment and laid it on top of the portable furnace. The shirt and the arm cuffs have been removed, and the female adult is busy pulling off the shoes and pants. She asks the other adult to get sweetpaste from their ration bag, and he returns holding another silver packet that he stares at somewhat confusedly. "Open it," she tells him. "Cover the skin."

There are other directions, but Karkat tries not to listen to the details. There's something surreal about the way the woman's explaining everything she's doing with a slightly condescending tone. It's like having a cooking show on in the background while he's busy around his hive, doing useless pointless things like coding or shouting at idiots online or dealing with his lusus. He half-expects to see the standard disclaimer run across the bottom of his vision. _All immature trolls (or derivatives thereof) used in the making of this program were culled on the surface of the Homeworld before shipment._ You don't fucking say.

The adults seem absorbed in their preparations. Karkat wonders if he could try to break and escape while they're distracted. Of course, his choices are to turn deeper into the cave, where they'd just run him down again, or head towards the burning light of the sun. His chances out there are pretty fucking abysmal, but Karkat would take that firey death over being cracked open for dessert or whatever those assholes are planning with him. 

But when Karkat leans to flex his legs, both adults pause in removing a flat silver gray sheet from the furnace and _look_ at him. They hadn't forgotten about him at all, he just didn't do anything worth their attention. 

Karkat doesn't want it now, either. Every time they glance at him it's like the air is knocked from his chest. He straightens on his knees and remains as still as possible, not even breathing, until the woman quirks a self-satisfied smile and both adults go back to pretending to ignore him. He'd never make it to the entrance of the cave. And knowing that they're _watching_ for it, Karkat can't imagine himself even trying.

Finally, the woman adjusts the settings on the furnace. Ladeci's inside, no sign of him visible except a pile of green stained clothes and half a horn against the far wall. The man runs a sonic scrubber conscientiously over his hands and then passes it to his partner, who gives hers a quick swipe. 

Fuck. And they're _looking_ at him again. The man, at least, only shoots him a brief, contemptuous glare before sitting down and taking out a tablet computer, but the woman sidles towards him the same way she'd moved to Ladeci, just before the end. "What do you think," she says to the man. "Ready for the amusement portion of the evening?" He responds with an uninterested grunt. 

"And what about you?" she asks, and now she's talking to Karkat. He lowers his gaze to the floor, but she grabs a fistful of hair to drag his head back up. "Are you going to cooperate?"

Karkat opens his lips and manages to say, "No." It's barely a wheeze, but it feels like the loudest thing he's ever said.

The adult's about to start laughing. "No?" she repeats. "Really?"

"No, fuck you, no," Karkat says, and now that he's remembered how to speak he can keep going. He's amazed at the words coming out of his mouth, like someone else is using his voice while he's too busy being terrified to stop them. "I'm not going to fucking... fucking _dance_ for you before you... Just kill me fucking now."

"So you're not going to kick and claw for every second of existence? You've considered your available options here, and that's the decision you made?"

"Why?" Karkat snarls. "So you can..." A vision of Ladeci being flung across the tunnel snaps into Karkat's mind, and he has to start over. "What's the point. We all know how this is going to end. Just get it over with."

The other adult looks up from his computer to say, "Tell me, is this really the brand of entertainment you've scheduled for our morning?"

"Shut it, Dien." she says. " _'We all know how'_ it's not. But actually, this is better." 

She lets go of Karkat's hair and, when he doesn't drop his head again, swings her arm back to her side. "You're right, you know," she says, conversationally. "There are worse things than being culled _quickly_. But that's some pretty impressive advance thinking for a... how old are you, anyway?"

"Five," Karkat says, and feels a new burst of anger. He clenches his hands back into fists and tries to hold onto it. "Ladeci was five too."

"What, you mean that other kid?" The adult points a thumb over her shoulder. "And you actually give a shit. Amazing. You know what I think?" She laughs. "Hey, maybe you do. I've never met a red blood without better mojo than mine."

"I know you're a... you're a bitch." 

The adult moves her hand towards Karkat's face, but she doesn't hit him. Instead she traces a fingernail along the bottom ridge of Karkat's left eye. It's so much worse. He can't stop himself from trembling, and the sharp tip of her nail seems to vibrate against the underside of his eyeball. "Watch it," she says, "or I'll change my opinion." 

Her finger meanders up from his eye and taps him a few times on the forehead. "But yeah, I'm pretty sure you're the one who tried to bluff me out when I found you. It was a shitty assed attempt, but then I guess all your practice lying is to idiot wigglers who get confused by a bit of gray paint."

"I didn't lie to them," Karkat says, but he knows neither of them believe it.

"That's right! 'Cause it's too easy to get caught in a lie. You were _careful_ ," she says, grinning widely. This is the worst conversation Karkat has ever had, and he can't stand that she thinks it’s hilarious. 

"So here's what I think, I think you're one of the ones that could have made it." She taps her nail once more against Karkat's forehead. He flinches. "I think there's enough pieces of personality floating around in there that maybe eventually, if you'd been more lucky, you could have developed into a _person_.

"So maybe for you, it's not simply a question of being culled now or later. What I think is you actually had something to lose."

Karkat's body wants to fold in on itself, as if it's convinced she's kicked him repeatedly in the abdomen. He knows it would have been impossible. He _knows_. As soon as anybody found out about his blood color, it'd be over for him, and that's not a secret he can keep when it's time to be registered with the Fleet. 

But fuck her for taunting him with the possibility. Even this psycho asshole thinks he would have made a worthy troll, but it was never going to matter with his disgusting mutant blood. And even that doesn't matter anymore, because he stumbled into a cave full of adults and getting killed is the right punishment for being so fucking stupid.

"Are you finished toying with him yet?" the man says. "It's distracting."

"Not even close," she says. "In fact, I was just about to expand his options." She pushes Karkat's forehead back until she's staring directly into his eyes. "So here's the deal, kid. You do what we tell you, exactly, no hesitating or complaining or fighting back... amusing as that'd be... and maybe I'll let you make it out of here. Probably not. We're probably going to kill you no matter what you do. But who knows, keep me happy, and maybe you'll have a chance."

It's the worst offer Karkat has ever heard. It's somehow worse than the guaranteed painful death he's been trying to resign himself to, because he knows he can't believe it but he wants to. She's even gleefully admitted the tiny shred of hope she's dangling in front of him is as non-existent as her stupid imaginary string, but he still wants to kick and claw and _dance_ for it.

"What if I don't," he forces himself to say through clenched teeth. "Does that mean you'll kill me now?"

The adult tosses her head and laughs. "Oh, no." she says, eventually. "Nah, I'm still going to use you for whatever I want. I am going to use the _fuck_ out of you. The only thing in question is if there'll be anything left when I'm done."

She moves her fingernail up into his hairline, then slides her whole hand onto the top of his head. Everywhere she's touched him burns in Karkat's mind like a line of acid on his skin. 

"So how about it?" she says, still grinning down at him. "We have a deal?"

Karkat doesn't answer. He can't. His tongue moves against his throat, but if he opens his mouth he's either going to throw up or start screaming and never stop. Her hand is still resting between his horns. He lets the weight of it push his head into a nod.

"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I knew you were going to cooperate."

There's a banging sound from behind her, where the other adult has stopped working. He's slammed his tablet beside him rather than captchaloguing it. "You're not serious about letting him go!"

The woman cocks her head. "Yeah? So is that a fact, or just something you wish was a fact?" She turns to glance at her partner, and her fingers pull at tufts of Karkat's hair when she decides to hold on. "But sure, I might be. Why not?"

“It would undermine the secrecy of our location. Unless you intend to endanger our mission simply so you can play _games_.”

“Hah!” she says. “Dien, look at this kid." She pushes against Karkat’s forehead, shoving him away, and he teeters on his knees. He has to twist wildly to keep himself from falling over, and his shoulders, locked behind him, strain painfully. "C'mon, do you really think he's about to abscond and tattle?"

"Not unless you're foolish enough to set him free," the man says, and the low rumbling vibration in his voice echoes across the cave. 

Karkat has just about steadied himself, but she pushes him again, batting playfully, almost gently, at the side of his head. “If it’ll get you to relax, I’ll give you my _guarantee_ he’s not getting out of here.” And mostly what Karkat feels is relief: the certainty of being culled is so much easier than the _almost_ certainty. The adult must know that too, because then she adds, “Anyway, not until after we do,” poisoning him again with hope.

So that’s it, if he wants to survive, he has to hold on until they’re ready to leave this tunnel. Which means at least until the sun goes down, and right now the days are frustratingly long. Although it could be much more than that. They’ve set up heavy looking equipment Karkat doesn’t recognize, overkill if they’re just hiding from solar rays, and he’s seen movies about military squadrons forced to wait in obscure locations for _weeks_. There’s no way he can do this.

There’s a few seconds of quiet as the adults stare each other. It’s the blue blooded soldier who backs down first. “Fine,” he says. “If you wish to spend the morning grub-sitting, I won’t interfere. Even though I don’t understand the appeal.”

“Hmm.” The woman turns back to Karkat and, after staring at him for a moment, grabs another handful of his hair. Karkat still hasn’t completely recovered his balance, and now he’s shaking more from muscle fatigue than fear. When she pulls his head back, forcing him to stillness, he disgusts himself by feeling a brief spark of gratitude.

“You’re going to have to change his mind about that,” she says to Karkat. “So go over there and start sucking on his horns.”

Her words echo in Karkat’s brain like noise without meaning. He looks up at her in horrified incomprehension.

“What?” she demands. “Are yours so pathetically tiny you don’t even know what they’re for?” She slaps one of Karkat’s horns and he cries out in pained surprise. He’d have collapsed if she wasn’t still holding onto his hair. “What did I fucking tell you about hesitating?”

“No, fuck, fuck, okay.” There’s a weight building behind Karkat’s eyes but he can’t cry. He _can’t_. It’s something to hold on to. “Okay.” 

He tries to climb to his feet, but his legs are slow and heavy from kneeling so long and he can’t use his arms to compensate. After two and half failed starts, the adult helpfully pulls him up by his hair to something approximating upright. 

Of course Karkat knew they were bigger than him, and of course she’d been towering over him while he cowered on his knees. He’d just assumed that part of the effect was his imagination joining right up in the terrorizing Karkat Vantas extravaganza for assholes. But now he’s standing beside her and his head barely reaches the emerald green lines of her sign.

Karkat sways a few times, but when it seems like he's not going to fall over she lets go. She steps to the side, leaving him a clear path to the other adult. The man is glaring at them, and when Karkat takes a shaky step in his direction he bares his teeth in a disgusted grimace. He doesn't want this either. Then fucking open your fucking protein chute and fucking regurgitate some word sounds, Karkat wills as he stumbles across the cave, but the man remains silent. 

Karkat thought that the tunnel was suffocatingly small when it was all the distance between him and two adult trolls, but now it's taking forever for him to cross it. Each step stings as blood returns to his legs, and he stumbles over the loose stones that slide under his shoes. His instincts scream that he's too exposed in the open space between them, defenseless before _predators_ , but he knows things will be worse when he finally arrives.

Which he does now, pausing uncertainly a few feet to the side of the man. He's sitting on a metal bench and clenching the side of his tablet computer in a tight knuckled fist.

"If you let him touch me," the man says, not to Karkat but to the woman leaning back against the opposite wall, "I will tear out his shitblood throat."

"Dien, Dien, Dien," she says, and every time she overuses his name, his lips tighten over his fangs. Karkat realizes with a fresh wave of horror that along with everything else happening, he's trapped in the middle of some inexplicable adult drama. Fuck. 

"Don't be like that. The kid just wants to show you a good time." She's smiling that open hungry smile. "I _know_ you trust me, Dien." The man growls deep in his throat, but doesn't answer. Her eyes flick to Karkat. "Well? What the hell is the hold up?"

If he's supposed to decide which asshole he's more terrified of, there's no fucking contest. He inches closer to the man, circling behind the bench. When he can't get any closer without touching him, Karkat clenches his eyes shut and leans forward until he feels the solidity of bone against his extended tongue. The man's shiver reverberates up through his horns to Karkat's jaw. 

So what the fuck is supposed to happen now? Karkat's never done this before. He tries wagging his tongue a little. The man's horns are rougher than Karkat's, with small pits and lengthwise grooves. 

"This is your idea of a good time?" the man says.

"I don't know," says the woman. "It's pretty funny to watch." There's a sudden stripe of pain over Karkat's shoulders, and he bangs his mouth hard between his teeth and the man's horn. It's enough to draw some blood from his inside lip, and he swallows it away in panic.

The woman's coiling back her psychic whip. "C'mon kid, pay attention here. Wrap your lips around that appendage. I want to see you pleasuring that horn like your life depends on it." She laughs like it's a hilarious inside joke. "And you, Dien, have some pity! How's he supposed to know what you want from him? If he was psychic we'd know it by now." Is she playing auspistice between them? What the hell.

Karkat's brain is an echo chamber of _Fuck you_. Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you. The idea of putting his mouth back on any part of their bodies makes him sick. He'd give up and let them kill him now if he thought it would work, if that bitch didn't already promise him that this was just the _easy_ way. Because as bad as this is, he has no problem imagining they could make it worse. 

The man is shouting low and insulted across the tunnel. Karkat leans forward and, just like she fucking told him to, wraps his lips around the other adult's closest horn. He has to stretch his mouth to fit it around the circumference, but he manages. He slides his tongue against it and, when saliva starts to ooze wet and slippery from his lips, sucks back. The man stops talking, his words fading into a moan. 

"See?" the woman says.

_Fuck you fuck you fuck you._

The man leans into Karkat, destabilizing his center of gravity yet again. In an unthinking effort not to slip, Karkat bites down for leverage, and then he nearly falls anyway when he freezes in fear, sure he's about to be made to regret the mistake.

But the man just groans. "Yes," he says, "Yes. Lower," and lifts one hand to rub the angled tip of his other horn. Karkat is so relieved that he's _glad_ for the chance to comply. He licks his way downwards and drags his lips and teeth lightly over the cracks in the bone. 

When he's told to stop, Karkat's cheek is already buried in the man's hair. Everything stinks of sweat and styling oil, and half his view is greasy black strands. "Harder," the man says in a rough voice, and Karkat breathes out and then pulls back as strong as he can with cheeks and his tongue. 

The man makes a low humming noise, but after a moment he says, "I said _harder_. I want to feel _teeth_."

If someone jammed their teeth into one of Karkat's horns, Karkat thinks he'd rip off his own skin, but who the fuck knows how it works with adults. Karkat bites down gingerly, and when that earns him nothing but an impatient growl he clenches his jaw, fitting his sharpest teeth into the surface cracks of the horn. He tries to tell himself he's doing it to _hurt_ , but with the wet, desperate noises the man's making he can't even pretend. The man moves his head in short, twisting jerks, rubbing himself against Karkat's lips. His hand runs up and down his free horn, fingernails curled in.

Karkat swallows another mouthful of saliva and the man forces in a ragged breath. "Do that again," he says, so Karkat does, swallowing again and again and again even after his tongue is tired and his mouth is dry. The man, with exaggerated carefulness, re-captchalouges his computer. Then he starts to undo the clasp on his black military pants. 

Karkat tries to focus on the cave wall instead. He wants to think about anything other than the man's rough fingers sliding down to stroke himself, but he can't afford the mental distance. He still has to struggle to maintain his balance, and he still has to remember to move his tongue and teeth and lips the way they told him to. He still has to be their _entertainment_. 

Across the cave, the woman is watching with flared nostrils and narrow eyes. Karkat's darkly surprised she's not fondling her own horns, how better to appreciate the show she set up for herself. The man's thrusting his hips up against the palm of his hand, but he's sitting on a bench with no back support and can't exactly get a satisfying angle. 

Eventually he hisses in frustration. He reaches behind his shoulder and grabs Karkat, pulling Karkat roughly away from his head. Tendrils of drool bridge between Karkat's mouth and the horn like spiderwebs, glistening in the cave's increasing brightness. Karkat shakes his head until they break. His jaw is beginning to ache, and moving his teeth to slice them seems like an impossible amount of effort.

The man readjusts his grip, wrapping his hand firmly around Karkat's upper arm. He yanks Karkat forward, knocking his closest knee and ankle hard against the metal seat before dropping him hip-first to the floor in front of the bench. His legs complain, but the man's still holding his torso awkwardly above the ground by his arm. The pressure in his cuffed elbows and shoulders _burns_ like the joints are about to snap loose and spring themselves free of this bullshit whether Karkat's ready to join them or not.

Karkat tries to find a better angle, but he only ends up flopping his legs like a sea troll lusus stupid enough to trap itself on the shore. It doesn't matter for long. The man changes the angle of his wrist and drags Karkat sideways over the ground, until he's between the blue blooded adult's legs, face inches from the exposed mound of his bone bulge. The black membrane around his seedflap glistens with arousal.

Karkat doesn't know what he's expected to do now, but it turns out the answer is not a fucking thing. The man is just looking for a masturbation aid. He shoves Karkat's head deep into his crotch and finds a rhythm between rolling his hips and rubbing himself with Karkat's face. The ridge above Karkat's eye is pressed hard into the round swell of the man's bulge over and over as it's dragged the length between his seedflap and nook. 

It's hard not to struggle. The man's fingers dig into the back of Karkat's skull, and it's all that's supporting the top half of his body. His neck muscles strain with the weight and the forced jerky movements, but Karkat tries to unclench them. The better to let himself be _used_ like a ribbed fuck board. The juices from the man's seedflap make Karkat's forehead damp. There are wet, squelching noises where their skin rubs together, and sex pheromones drive up Karkat's nasal passages until it's all he can smell. If he was a few sweeps older, maybe they'd unlock something in his brain to help him get into the fucked up exercise, but right now any effect is outweighed by the dull throb of pressure in the eye the man's decided is his favorite rutting tool. Yeah, maybe they can force him to do any screwed up thing in their diseased imaginations, but they can't make him _want_ it. 

He's certain.

He's almost certain.

It's not the most consoling thought that has ever wormed itself through his think pan.

There's a shift in the way the man's sitting. His breath is coming in faster, shaky breaths. Instead of the endless rubbing the man's grip tightens above Karkat's neck and pulls him harder against his crotch. Karkat can't see and his nostrils are blocked against the man's skin, and he has to open his mouth to gulp air that tastes of stale sweat and pheromones. When the pressure against his eye starts to sting, Karkat tilts his head down so that instead it's his forehead jutting into the man's bulge. The man either doesn't notice or doesn't care.

The man's hips twist back and forth in quick, abortive movements until he suddenly relaxes, finished. He drops Karkat's head a few inches into the relatively fresh air beneath his legs, and Karkat breathes hard, trying to blow the stink from his sinuses. 

Karkat's not sure what's going to happen next. Not buckets, obviously, but... the man tenses once more, groans, and then there's the soft, warm movement of fluid against his bangs and forehead. The air turns sour. It's not a large amount, not really, but Karkat can feel it sliding thickly _on his face_ and his arms move helplessly against his back with his urgency to get it _off_. Some of it trickles down far enough to catch in his eyebrow and eyelash. When he blinks, he sees a deep shiny blue. The blue sign under the man's shoulder is a triumph of truth in labeling.

"Stop whining," the man orders, and it takes Karkat a second to recognize that, yes, he's being addressed and, yes, he's making a low pitched stuttering noise. Karkat swallows and, when his throat still threatens to vibrate, presses his tongue tight against the roof of his mouth. It seems to work, as long as he breathes slowly. "Now clean me up."

Karkat rolls his eyes upward. There's more viscous blue fluid around the man's nook. Some of it has puddled on the open crotch of his pants. He lifts Karkat's head opposite it. 

Karkat leans forward and, since his hands are locked behind him, tries to hook the fluid with his cheekbone and wipe it off. He gets some to stick, and when he pulls back, a string of blue swings away and hits him wetly in the ear. 

Something else hits him lightly in the ass, but the blue blooded man howls and clutches his Karkat-free hand to his knee. "What are you doing!" he shouts, but he's not talking to Karkat.

"Sorry," says the woman. "Really, Dien, I am. You know I usually have better aim."

As if in proof, Karkat's back flares and he lands face first back into the man's bulge. When he's pulled away, there's a messy smear of dark blue left on the man's seedflap. The sting where the invisible whip touched him doesn't subside right away and he hopes desperately, as if it actually matters, that she hasn't broken his skin.

"What kind of idiot wiggler are you! He told you to fucking clean him up!"

"I am," Karkat says, but his voice breaks and he's sure he wasn't loud enough for them to hear. He tries again. "I am. Fuck you. I fucking am."

"Oh good," says the woman. "your mouth works." There's another shock of pain across his back, but this time the man holds Karkat's head steady. It's just the rest of his body which rocks with the blow, and his already tortured muscles twist to compensate. He drags air between clenched teeth so he doesn't scream. "So get your worthless lips in place or I'll claw them off your inept nooksucking face." She ends on a laugh, probably thrilled that Karkat provided her an opportunity to use the insult literally.

Of course that's what they want him to do. Karkat must have been in denial not to fucking realize it. He's unsuccessful at ignoring the stinging lines on his lower back, but they turn out to be useful. The pain burns out thoughts about what he's _doing_ as he presses his lips above the man's bulge and licks the misplaced blue fluid from his seedflap. It's sour and films over the back of his throat when he swallows. The man's knees twitch inward a few inches when Karkat's tongue touches between membranes.

"Unless I'm overstepping. You'd tell me if I'm overstepping, right Dien?" says the woman, and Karkat can't tell if she's mocking or sincere. Both possibilities are equally awful. "I was just getting his attention for you. You didn't seem... satisfied."

The man grunts, although that could be thanks to Karkat's ministrations. He pointedly rubs his injured knee, but he says, "No, It's fine."

Karkat removes the last of the blue from above the man's bulge. Everything is still sticky with his saliva, but trying to remove that with his _mouth_ sounds like an unwinnable game. Just thinking about it makes him want to curl up in a pupal position. Instead, he lets his head drop lower, closer to the man's nook. Thinking about _that_ makes him want to curl up in a pupal position too. 

As slowly as he thinks he can get away with, Karkat licks the scattered droplets from the fabric of the man's pants. The sourness of it fills his mouth even after he swallows, and when he takes a breath the air tastes thick and terrible. And this is him procrastinating.

Too soon the man's pants are as clean as Karkat's ever going to manage without a fabric refreshening unit. He forces himself to look at the man's nook, on the theory that forcing himself to do it is better than them forcing him. Thick, sticky droplets and tendrils are splattered around the dark gray orifice. Karkat's mind goes blank to make enough room for the certainty that it is the grossest thing he has ever seen.

He shuts his eyes again and leans forward tongue first. He tries to dwell on the pain of his back, or of his neck and shoulders, or his hip and shaking knees. Actually, pretty much all of his body won't shut the fuck up. But reminding himself he is _sore_ as well as miserable and more terrified than he'd imagined was possible doesn't exactly improve his feelings score.

Karkat quickly licks the blue fluid from the man's skin and then, seeing no new delaying tactic, presses his lips around the nook itself. The man's breath hitches and his body relaxes slightly. His grip softens around Karkat's head, and he drags the young troll deeper into his crotch _gently_. A couple of the man's fingers re-grip further up, slipping closer to Karkat's own horns.

It's suddenly a twisted nightmare version of a romantic redrom kiss. Well, of what Karkat had _imagined_ a romantic redrom kiss would be like. Karkat opens his lips enough to slide out his tongue, but instead of meeting a chosen partner's smooth teeth and own waiting tongue, he's wiping the last bit of sour fluid from an adult's nook. And then what? Everyone throws around _"nooksucker"_ , so should he actually suck? 

He tries it, pulling back slowly with his tongue. The man breathes once sharply. "That's enough," he decides, and lets go of Karkat's skull. 

Without anything to support him, Karkat immediately falls. He manages to turn and land on his shoulder instead of his face, but this is a _mistake_. The circle of his arms and chest muscles burns after the impact. One of his horns burns too. He must have nicked it on the bench on the way down. 

Karkat rolls enough to rest the side of his head on the cave floor, and he breathes in shallow puffs against the stone. The cool hardness of it is welcome after dealing with warm, yielding flesh. Sunlight filters through the cave, making the tunnel glow gold and highlighting tiny crystals embedded in stone. The points are so bright that they hurt his eyes to look, like the world is made up of a million tiny knives. They glitter in time with the throbbing of his horn, and Karkat's never seen until now how everything is _connected_. Fucking miracles. Trust that bulgebiting idiot to be right after all.

Far away, someone is clicking fabric clasps into place, but it has nothing to do with him.

"So, you're done with him?"

"Obviously."

"Good. Set him up so I can grab him."

Karkat's throat is getting tight. No, that's not it. The man has grabbed onto his collar and is pulling him back up. But no no _no_ , he was _done_ he just fucking _said_. The man lifts Karkat far enough Karkat can drag his knees under himself so the collar pulls less against his neck. When it looks like he's going to stay up, the man lets go of Karkat's shirt.

Almost immediately, something brushes lightly on his hair and slides down over his shoulders. Karkat can't see what it is, which is enough of a give away even before it tightens around his upper arms and yanks him backwards. He folds over, hitting the ground with his arms and ass. His legs untangle themselves as he's reeled across the tunnel in a series of heaving pulls. It hurts like hell, but it's a dejected, despairing pain, like his nerves have given up on Karkat dealing with their problems.

The man has taken out his computer again, although he's not even pretending to work on it. Karkat catches himself wishing that he hadn't finished with Karkat so quickly, no matter how terrible it had been. It had been so fucking terrible. The man hadn't been gentle, but it seemed like he just didn't give a fuck what happened to Karkat, like Karkat was some inanimate tool he saw no use for maintaining. But the woman... 

Karkat remembers her hungry glee when Ladeci was out of his mind in agony, how she'd stretched the screaming out. He claws reflexively at the ground, but his fingers aren't even strong enough to grab on. One small loose pebble catches against his fingernail. He tries to keep it as evidence he's accomplished _something_ , but it bounces away before he can convince his palm to close.

The invisible rope yanks him once more and then pauses. He's laid out messily at the woman's feet. "Up," she says.

Karkat rolls onto his side and pulls his knees close to his chest so he can rock onto them. That's what he's attempting to do, anyway. It probably just looks like feeble writhing. After a moment, the woman takes pity and pulls upwards on the psychic rope around his arms. Karkat cries out briefly as his shoulders are pressed into a new angle, but when he leans against the rope there's enough leverage to help him climb up. It feels absurdly like they're cooperating towards a common goal, like they're both on team 'get Karkat to his knees before this adult bitch loses her shit and stabs him through the bone bulge with one of his own nubby horns'. Fuck, he wishes he hadn't thought that. She probably would.

He manages to reach a kneeling position, but she doesn't stop pulling on the rope. Taking it as a miraculously subtle hint, Karkat climbs shakily onto his feet. The higher vantage somehow makes her _more_ intimidating, because his head still doesn't reach above her mid-chest.

The adult brings a hand to his face. Karkat cringes, but she just touches her thumb to his stickiest eyebrow. She rubs at it lightly, working the man's fluid into his skin. "See, kid," she says, "that wasn't so bad, was it? I knew you could handle it."

For a second Karkat's worried she wants an answer, but then she grins down at him, as brightly as if they were bulge bumping bros, and says, "And hey, now you've been softened up a little, it's _my_ turn."

The air is once again too thick to breathe. It doesn't even help when the adult hooks a fingernail under her invisible lasso and eases it off Karkat's chest and shoulders. It doesn't feel like freedom. It feels like he's about to crash back to the ground if the cave doesn't stop fucking spinning.

For a few seconds, she just stands there and watches him tremble, her grin spreading sharper across her face. She slides one of her longer fangs over her lip, and when Karkat shudders deeply, she breathes in long and hungry. He must stink of terror, underneath all the sex crap drying on his face, and she's _enjoying_ it. Fuck her. He wants to scream at her to just fucking get on with it, but not nearly enough to actually open his mouth. He doesn't want to find out what happens next.

The adult turns away and takes a low-backed chair from her captchalogue deck. The chair is wide and overstuffed, very unlike like the man's utilitarian metal bench. It's skinned with a weird purple and green striped leather that doesn't look like it was taken from anything native to Alternia. Karkat's just thankful it's not _gray_.

She flops unceremoniously into the seat, which bounces around her briefly like its cushions are stuffed with rubber. "Get over here," she says to Karkat, and hooks one thumb to a spot on the ground at her side.

Karkat gets. He's moving before he consciously gives in to the inevitability. His feet have started walking without checking with him, and he can only observe, slightly astounded, as they navigate a path of their own devising. That they decide to stop exactly where the adult wanted him to stop seems like coincidence.

From here, he's inches away from the woman, and her horns are rooted right at his face level. Karkat can't even hope that's an accident. He closes his eyes for a second, tries to blank out the panic churning in his chest, and then takes the horn in front of him in his mouth. He does it the way she said, wraps his lips around the entire bone. He closes around the spot just above the base, where the man had kept him the longest, and runs his tongue over the grooves. He doesn't press with his teeth though, just in case.

The woman stiffens when he sucks back against her horn, but then she reaches a hand back and pushes him away. "Look at you, so _eager_!" she says, laughing. "I didn't even say what I want yet!"

Karkat is overwhelmed by disgust for himself. Apparently he's such an enthusiastic participant in this fucked up show, he's offering his services beyond what they're _taking_ from him. So what if these assholes are having some fun before they kill him (probably probably probably). It's not what he'd been warned about, but adults aren't required to give a fuck about his expectations. It's like resenting the sun for burning him if he's caught outside.

It's actually reassuring to be reminded that the person he hates most is still Karkat Vantas.

"I'm glad you like that horn, because the thing you are going to do," says the woman, "is swallow it."

It's not a demand that makes any fucking _sense_ , because first she'd have take it off her head. But as Karkat stares blankly at her head, his incomprehension is replaced by an awful suspicion. Until past her ears, the adult's horns grow back only slightly rounded, and then they curve sharply downward. Once he notices, it's harder _not_ to see how the line of the bone follows the outlined shape of a throat cut away from some anatomy diagram. Karkat owes his imagination a fucking thank you card for keeping everything so very nicely abstract.

It must be obvious when he's figured out what she's demanding, because the adult suddenly looks twice as smug. She leans back, resettling herself in the chair. "Oh, are you hesitating again," she asks. She sounds amused, almost mockingly so, but he can guess that's not going to last long.

He's not _hesitating_. Okay, that's a blatant fucking lie, but he still has no idea how this is supposed to work. Karkat takes a step to the side so that he's lined up with the tip of her horn. Hers don't come to a point the way most troll horns do. They're rounded, though still far less nubby than Karkat's own. Up close, the grain in the bone is odd. She probably filed them down herself. On _purpose_.

For a second he's nearly paralyzed with phantom sympathy pains, so fuck you, imagination, he's ripping up that thank you card with his teeth. But at least he doesn't have to put something sharp in his mouth. He wouldn't trust her not to move suddenly and stab him through the back of the throat. She'd probably find it hilarious.

Very carefully, Karkat widens his stance and bends to one side. When he doesn't end up falling over, he leans closer to the adult and hooks the end of her horn with his tongue. Then he guides his mouth over it until the horn fills his mouth. It presses solid and unnatural against his tongue, and he can barely close his lips while keeping his teeth apart enough not to bite her.

He moves a little around her, struggling to keep standing at this really terrible angle, and the adult makes a low humming noise. Okay. He tries to recreate the effect by swishing his tongue around, and the adult shakes once and bends her head toward him, jabbing him uncomfortably in the back of his mouth. He fucking _knew_ it.

The adult catches him by his hair before he can fall. His bottom teeth bounce up into her horn, and she inhales noisily through her fangs. "Careful," she murmurs, but doesn't explain if she means, "Try to stay upright," or, "Bite me again and I'll wear your entrails as leggings."

Karkat recenters himself, but the adult doesn't let him go. She's pulling his head towards her, so he can't find a more comfortable position. Her horn keeps poking him in the throat. Saliva gathers at the edges of his mouth. He's too afraid to risk closing his jaw again to swallow.

"Swallow," the adult orders.

But he can't, because her horn is in the way. He can't. She grips his hair tighter and angles his face up, pressing the round tip her horn solidly against the back of his mouth. "Open your grubfucking throat and swallow me." _He can't_. "Do it right the fuck now, or I'll rip my way through."

Karkat shuts his eyes. He tries to imagine he's eating something round and solid. Musclebeast braid, maybe, even though musclebeast braid is truly disgusting. Maybe it _is_ musclebeast braid, then, because that would explain why he wasn't chewing the flavor out before swallowing it whole. Yeah, you can dip it in grubsauce, but why the fuck do they even make musclebeast braid. The only person Karkat knows who likes it is a perverted asshole and...

The horn presses deeper against his mouth, and Karkat forces his throat to unclench, pulls up with his tongue, and _swallows_. The horn moves into him, past his mouth and the opening of his throat. But she doesn't stop pushing. Helpless, he swallows again. The curved part of her horn slides past his lips and jams against the roof of his mouth.

The adult's horn shifts inside Karkat's throat, tilting slowly forward. Karkat has to open his jaw as wide as he can, but it doesn't help. The blunt tip pushes in at an angle his throat doesn't _go_. It prods things that shouldn't be prodded and stretches the flesh inside his neck, and still the adult doesn't stop. The corner of her horn is wedged in his mouth, and he's suddenly certain she's going to tear him open. Karkat would yank away in panic if there was anywhere to panic _to_.

She reaches her other arm over her head and takes a new fist of hair by Karkat's temple, which she uses to position his head more exactly, tilting his skull back and forth, up and in. The horn scrapes millimeter by millimeter deeper into his mouth. Karkat doesn't fight her. There's nothing to fight. He's actually trying to make it easier, and he's not even sure anymore if he's trying to make it easier for himself or for her. Maybe there's no fucking difference. But he's keeping his throat muscles pliant and swallowing repeatedly in case it helps. Mostly it doesn't seem to, but every time he does, the adult's fingers twitch against his scalp.

She moves her head back in tiny rocking motions, steadily working her way in. The most curved part of her horn butts against the back of his mouth, and the tip angles forward so far inside his throat he's sure it's about to stab through. Then the adult does something to rotate his head, leans herself back in the chair, and everything just _pops_ into place. He's facing forward, not up, and the curve of her horn sits on the back of his tongue and turns into his throat. He can still feel where the end of her horn stretched and scratched inside his neck, but it's only left-over discomfort. The tip is pointing down.

His mouth circles a part of bone close enough to the root that several strands of her hair run between his lips. The horn runs thick and immobile inside him, trapping him against the adult's head. Compared to _anything_ this should be the worst fucking thing possible, but Karkat's shuddering with relief. He's dizzy with it. Or maybe he's dizzy with lack of oxygen, since he's had other things than breathing to worry about just now.

Karkat pulls in air through his nose, and the world refocuses. Everything gains detail, but it is without fail utterly crappy detail. The cave is too bright. The texture of the bone in his mouth would make him scream if it wasn't shoved all the way down his noisehole, gagging him. He can smell the woman over the fluid the man left on his face. Sweat, dust and, sickeningly, cooking spices waft from her hair.

He moans through his nose. It vibrates through his throat, and the woman answers it with a soft moan of her own. She's still gripping his head with both hands, but now she loosens one and runs the fingers lightly through his hair. It's like she is fucking petting him. Karkat wants to flinch away, but of course there's no way that's happening.

"Good," she says. Her voice is breathy and distracted. She runs her hand through his hair again. Again. Fucking again. "You did good there, kid. And the hard part is over."

His body just seems to give up when she says that. His shoulders remind him that they're unhappy. Muscles all through him shake in exhaustion, and he has to support himself with the horn in his mouth so that his legs don't give way. If the adult notices, she doesn't seem to mind.

"Okay. You're going to slide a bit forward," the adult says, like Karkat isn't locked entirely immobile around her own appendage. But he makes an effort to reach further with his lips. She laughs once, slow and halfway to a sigh. "Here, let me help you with that."

Her fingers tighten in his hair again and she pulls on his head. The horn pushes further back in his throat, until he has to fight the sense that it's in the way of his breathing. She doesn't drag him more than an inch, stopping when his face hits her scalp. It's even more uncomfortable than before, but if it's all she wants he's fucking _grateful_. He can still deal with this.

A thin trickle of saliva spills over Karkat's lip. He scoops back as much of it as he can with his tongue, then tries to swallow a mouthful of spit around the adult's horn. It takes a lot of work, and the back of his mouth spasms in protest.

Now that the adult isn't jamming it deeper, having her horn in his throat doesn't hurt, exactly. Karkat's eaten larger things whole. But the way it just stays in place when he swallows feels _wrong_ , and his neck muscles don't know how to deal with it, trying to free themselves by pushing the horn back up instead. Karkat whimpers through his nose with every exhale.

He starts to slip, and the adult pushes him back towards her head. Her hair isn't slicked back like the man's had been, and loose strands slide up his nose, poking the inside of his nostrils. He breathes out hard but they don't budge at all, and he can't shake his head or paw them away.

His lips are pressed against the seam of skin and horn, and Karkat moves his tongue around them, gathering saliva before it can leak into her hair. When he brings it back into his throat, the adult tightens her fingers on his head. Her breathing is almost as noisy as his.

"This is... perfect," she says. "Just... keep moving like that. You're perfect." And Karkat has to stop breathing for several seconds, fighting again not to cry. He makes sure not to stop _licking_ , though.

The adult shudders, and it echoes along her horn. Then she leans forward, and Karkat's yanked like there's a hook inside his throat. His feet stumble under him, but there's nowhere to fall.

The adult takes out a small, purple bench and places it in front of the chair. She sits back again, dragging Karkat to his original position, and kicks her heels onto the new furniture. Karkat adjusts his neck to find the least of fucking horrible angles, but the inside of his throat still stings after the sudden movement. He's slid too far back again, and the adult mashes his face into her hair.

Karkat screams once, brief and high pitched through his nose, and the adult sighs. She taps him in the back of the head with a fingernail. "Keep your fucking mouth moving," she says. Karkat immediately tightens his lips below his teeth and runs his tongue along the part of her horn it can reach. It feels like the horn has doubled in size in his mouth, filling him entirely.

But that's impossible. He's on the edge of panic. Karkat clamps down on the next scream building in his throat, and works to steady his breathing instead. He has to get through this. And onto whatever next terrible thing they have planned. Fuck you, brain, that isn't fucking helping.

The adult pulls one hand away from Karkat's head and reaches into her pants. And Karkat was actually hoping this part would happen soon, but she doesn't seem interested in getting him in front of her seedflap. She braces her feet on the bench and rocks into her hand. Karkat tries to relax and let his body move with hers, but the horn still pokes and yanks on the inside of his throat.

A long, rolling movement bounces her horn into one of Karkat's teeth, and the adult stiffens. Karkat wrenches his jaw open even wider and licks at the spot he hit in frantic apology.

She starts rocking again. The fingers on the hand supporting his head run gently through his hair. She is petting him again, but this time, as a sign of her non-anger, it is so grotesquely welcome Karkat moans in relief. The adult's movements grow rougher and larger, but Karkat tries to focus past the discomfort and just lick and suck and swallow.

Finally, the adult breathes deeply and stills. "Stop," she orders, and Karkat freezes. She tightens her grip in his hair and pulls him backwards.

The curve of her horn presses up against the top of his throat. Karkat forces himself not to struggle. He wants that thing out of him, but it was so hard to get it there, he'd almost rather be trapped against her skull forever than go through that again. 

But it turns out it's a lot easier to slide out than _in_. His throat and jaw are so stretched open right now that the corner of the horn comes out into his mouth without a fight. The blunt tip shifts back and forth, pressing a wandering line up the inside of his neck, but it's not worse than being yanked after her every movement.

The adult bends her head forward and angles the curved section of her horn between Karkat's wide teeth. It's almost completely out of him when he notices that, just under the bend, there's a streak of vivid betraying red. Not much, but if one of the adults notices it would be over for him. Shouldn't that be what he wants? But Karkat jerks his head forward and licks off the blood with a sweep of his tongue.

The woman pulls him back hard by his hair. When she lets go, his knees give up and he collapses free to the cave floor. No, nothing like free, but just being able to move his head again is the best fucking thing he can imagine right now. His jaw aches from being wrenched open for so long. When he tries to close it sharp pains shoot across his skull.

His throat is raw and strangely hollow feeling, and it stings when he closes it to swallow. Karkat rests his head against the side of the purple chair and breathes through his mouth in a wet, noisy whistle. It takes all the effort he has.

Sharp fingernails clamp onto his shoulder. The adult is pulling him towards the front of the chair. He moves where she wants him to, half sideways crawling, half being dragged by his arm. She deposits him between the chair and footrest, her legs locking him in on either side.

Karkat sits back on his knees. The adult watches him sway for a few moments, before planting a heel on his chest and pushing him backwards until his shoulder-blades are leaning against the footrest. The pressure on his arms hurts, but it's a slow, distant throbbing. Karkat wonders without caring if that's a bad sign.

The adult takes her foot off him and shuffles forward. The seat bounces slightly each time she moves. Her pants are still clasped shut, but the hand she was rubbing against her genitals is now cupped up at her side. Karkat can see dark green slipping through the creases between her fingers.

"Let's see your tongue," she says.

Karkat's mouth is still hanging slightly open. He pushes his tongue forward over his bottom row of teeth. Drool spills messily around it, but he is far past giving a fuck.

The adult dips her first two fingers in the palm of her cupped hand. They come away sticky and covered in green. She touches the edge of Karkat's tongue and then slides them fully into his mouth. He tastes a now familiar sourness.

She pulls her fingers out and rolls them again in her other hand. This time instead of simply coating Karkat's tongue, her digits explore his mouth. She runs them along the edge of his gums and pokes experimentally at the softer tissue near the back of his throat. It's like she's painting the inside of his mouth with her fluid.

The adult drops her fingers back onto his tongue, and slides them back. She hooks them over the root of his tongue where her horn had just been, and Karkat shudders and shuts his eyes until she pulls them away.

She takes the fingers out of his mouth and wipes them on his cheek beside his lips. Then she gives her other hand an evaluating glance, stretches it, and then reaches it palm out in front of Karkat's face.

It's sticky with dark green swirls, and this close the air is choked with the smell of her fluid and used up pheromones. There's a stillness to the adult's expression as she watches him, and Karkat can make a pretty good guess at what she wants from him. He extends his tongue and licks at her palm, filling his mouth with a fresh burst of filmy sourness.

Karkat swallows with effort and sticks his tongue back out to lick her palm again, but the adult seems to have gotten bored. She smears her hand up his face, wiping the heel of it roughly against his nose and forehead and into his hair. Fluid catches in his nostrils, rank and inescapable.

She drags her thumb down to Karkat's forehead and doodles looping patterns in the mess on his skin. His face must look like some pupa's first claw painting or an impressionistic ode to the unbearable fucking shittiness of being, a study in emerald and sapphire.

The adult looks over Karkat's head to the other side of the cave, probably at the blue blooded man. Whatever she sees inspires her to grin sharply. She bends closer to Karkat, grabbing his head when he starts to flinch reflexively away, and licks a short, sloppy line above his eyebrow where her fresh dampness mixes with the man's drying blue. The spot where the airflow cools against her saliva burns brighter in Karkat's mind than any of the other crap on his face. Somehow the casual intimacy of _her_ tongue on _his_ skin feels like a greater violation than jamming her horn down his throat.

Her eyes are still fixed across the tunnel. Karkat is hit again with the terrible knowledge that the things happening right now don't actually have anything to do with him. He's just a prop for whatever the adults are trying to prove to each other.

The adult traces a few more lazy circles on Karkat's face. "Do you understand yet that I can do anything I want with you?" she says. Karkat bends his head down, showing his defeat, but she pulls on his hair until he's looking up into her gaze. "What, did you miss where I asked you a question?"

"You..." Karkat's throat is still scratched and sore, and forcing words out is like spitting out hot coals. He tries again. "I think you've made that pretty fucking obvious."

And the adult fucking _beams_ at him. "Good!" she says. "I knew you were a clever one, for a wiggler." Then she grabs a knife from her specibus and brings it towards him point first.

This one is a couple inches shorter than the blade she terrorized him with when he was being a fucking _idiot_ who wouldn't admit his blood color, but the knife is carved from obsidian and so sharp that sunlight glows around the edge. Karkat presses himself further into the footrest, ignoring the complaints of his arms. But of course there's nowhere to escape to.

She lets go of Karkat's head and takes his collar instead. Then she slips the knife against the edge of the fabric and draws it down, cutting open his shirt in a neat, soundless line. She stops just before nicking the gray of his sign, and Karkat lets out a held breath as she moves the knife away. His shirt folds open under his neck, showing bruised but unbroken skin.

The adult lifts the bottom hem of his shirt and does the same thing again, this time slicing upwards. When she sits back to examine her work, Karkat's shirt flaps open over his upper chest and abdomen, held together only by the middle section.

Satisfied, she puts her knife away. Karkat stares up at her in bleak confusion. He has no idea what the point of that was, and he wishes to holy fuck he could believe it would stay that way. Especially when she leans back down, smiling. Why won't she ever stop fucking _smiling_?

The adult wraps both her hands into the top of Karkat's ravaged shirt. Her sharp fingernails dig into his sign. Then she pulls them apart, tearing through the black and gray fabric with a slow ripping sound that echoes impossibly loud in Karkat's ears.

It's not _his_ sign, not _really_ , not the secret scarlet symbol that was his reward for surviving the trials. The gray swirls he wears are borrowed and irrelevant and _not his_ , so it shouldn't feel like being skewered with a burning lance to have this taken from him. He looks away from his shirt and his vision is filled with the adult's intent, gleeful smile. The reflected light is so bright behind her hair it makes him sick.

He shuts his eyes entirely, but he can't block out the noise of fabric being methodically ripped apart. Karkat chokes back a sob after the final snap of thread, when his shirt swings open and unbridged over his chest. He's shivering, empty and exposed and indefinably lighter, as though coming unrooted from Alternia's gravity.


	3. Chapter 3

Fingers touch gently to his neck, and Karkat hisses as if they sunk in claws first. He reluctantly opens his eyes. The only thing worse than knowing what to expect moment to moment is waiting for the adult to _surprise_ him.

The adult pushes the shirt off his shoulders one at a time. The fabric not stuck between him and the footrest bunches at his sides, the long sleeves trapped in the arm cuffs at his elbows. She then moves to her feet in a smooth motion and reaches back to recaptchalogue the chair before looking at him. Her legs are inches in front of Karkat, and her eyes and teeth are nightmarishly far overhead.

She steps over him to his right. The heel of her boot comes close enough to his pants to brush fabric, but she doesn't take the ready opportunity to injure his legs. She just smirks down, appreciating his awareness of how easily she could have, if the whim struck her, and appreciating his helplessness to do one fucking thing about it.

The adult drops to one knee beside Karkat and slides a hand down his neck. Flat against his skin, her hand is smooth and cool, and the five sharp points of her fingernails curve out between his shoulder blades. She pushes him forward. Karkat bends over at the waist until there's enough room for the adult to reach between his back and the footrest.

Karkat feels more than hears the scratch of metal against metal as the adult unlocks the cuffs keeping his hands at his elbows. She pulls them away, carefully untrapping his arms from the tangle of metal and ruined fabric, which she tosses unceremoniously beside her. His arms unfurl limply, catching in the angle against his back. Karkat rolls his shoulders and elbows to move them to his sides, and his muscles shriek with pent up agony. Full circulation returns to his fingertips like acid in his veins.

With his regained freedom, Karkat allows unresistingly the adult to lean him back against her furniture. He leaves his hands useless and open on the ground.

She swings a knee over Karkat's own bent legs, positioning herself in front of him. Karkat feels a wave of claustrophobia, like the world has collapsed to the space between her body and the purple bench, no place to escape into and not even enough fucking room for him to _exist_ in.

The adult reaches forward and places a hand against his abdomen, spreading her fingers wide. Karkat's muscles twitch and pull back from her touch, but she rides the motion with her palm like a skywhale resting on the swell of the sea. He raises a heavy, half-curled fist between them... and then, faced with the question of what he was intending to _do_ with it, simply lets it drop back to the rocky floor.

She puts her other hand beside her first and begins to draw both up along his torso. Her fingers are pressing into the grooves where his bones come together, prodding at the shape of him under his clothes, his _skin_. She's _examining_ him, the way she would examine a weapon or an animal, or a toy she was careless with and might have ruined beyond its warranty. 

But while her fingertips probe in smooth, impersonal lines over his chest, there's still a hungry satisfaction in how she _looks_ at him that would look fucking psychotic aimed at a knife or a cracked computer. As if she doesn't look fucking psychotic anyway.

Her fingers dip into the dark gray bruises scattered and still forming along his torso, until she reaches the deep black one spreading out from one side of his chest. She makes a show of being surprised to find it there, marring him, and pokes curiously at its fading tendrils, even though it was perfectly fucking visible as soon as she took away his shirt. It isn't even hers. Karkat was strifing with his lusus yesterday and tripped hard into the food preparation block table.

Mock curiosity apparently satisfied, the adult slides her hand over the center of the bruise, and then digs in with her thumb. It's not more painful than so many things she's already done to him, but the shock of it makes Karkat gasp. She doesn't let up, just grinds through his injured flesh to the bone.

The adult keeps squeezing until the pain levels off to a constant Karkat can ignore. Then she rolls her thumb to the side, making a new line of nerves complain. The throbbing spreads into the network of darker gray marks on his skin.

Karkat rolls his eyes upwards to stare at the cave's rounded ceiling. His breathing is fast and shallow. The adult doesn't stop pressing into the bruise, but her other hand continues to slide up his chest, fondling the edges of his anatomy. She reaches over his shoulder and probes the pad of her thumb under the curve of Karkat's jaw.

Karkat tilts his head further backwards, but he can't escape her. It just leaves his neck stretched out and exposed, and the adult slides inquisitive fingers slowly along the ridges of tendon and bone in front of his throat. At the side of his chest, she moves her digging thumb back to its original spot, and pain blooms there new and stronger than the first time.

The pain isn't hard to deal with, but the fact that he's sitting passively and _letting_ her hurt him and touch him, and _lick_ him, makes him want to stab himself and save her the trouble. Karkat raises his lip, snarling a futile threat at the ceiling.

The adult decides to move a fingernail to his exposed teeth, and now he _can't_ close his lips again. He's not snarling anymore, he's just giving her better access. She traces the ridges of his teeth between their tips and gum-line. She taps one, and the noise vibrates hollowly through his skull.

A louder noise beeps behind him, and Karkat jerks in surprise, his chest arcing against the adult's hand. She glances across the cave, looking slightly disappointed. Her grip loosens. Blood rushes to fill the dent her thumb left in Karkat's bruise, and it stings and throbs in after-pain.

"Dien, can you shut that off for me?" she says. "I mean, it's for you too." The man doesn't answer, but Karkat hears the shuffle of footsteps moving across stone. The beeping stops.

The adult backs off, and it's like the universe snaps back into place around him. Everything is _too_ open. He's left helpless and exposed. The adult grabs the metal cuffs before jumping up and standing, and Karkat's arms tense at the thought of being bound again. She shakes black fabric from the loops and flat pieces, not in any apparent hurry. The sliced shirt falls again to a pile on the floor.

She bends down to Karkat and wraps her free fingers under his left arm, and then straightens, pulling him up. His legs are still shaky, and he has to lean into her hand to stay upright. His shoulder twinges, but it's not like the rest of him is any fucking happier about it.

The adult starts walking to the other side of the cave, and Karkat stumbles along behind her. Her fingers dig into the flesh of his arm whenever he trips or falls back. The man is standing in front of their portable furnace, turning off dials. Karkat realizes that the beeping must have been a timer for _dinner_ , and he loses his step entirely, paralyzed with fresh despair. He swings like a pendulum on his adult-supported shoulder.

She hauls him back up. "C'mon, kid," she says. "You can make it. You're almost there." And fuck her. _Fuck her_ with a diseased musclebeast dick if she thinks she ever gets to _encourage_ him about anything. But he still pulls his feet back under himself and continues dragging them one after the other.

She's brought him to one side of the man's vacated bench. She lowers her hand slowly, and Karkat sinks down to the floor. The bench is a cool line across his back, and beneath it, the lines from the adult's invisible whip throb in recognition of a like pattern. They don't sting in the air, though, which means she probably didn't rip the skin. Relief. He should be feeling relief right now.

"Zhaleya." The man's voice is a slow, warning rumble. The echo of it makes him seem a lot closer than where he's standing beside the furnace. "Is there some reason a rust blood child is leaning against my seat?"

Karkat starts to pull away from the bench, but the woman pushes him back into the metal. "What's the problem? It's not like he's bleeding on it," she says. "Give him a break, Dien. The poor guy's had an amazingly shitty day."

She's smiling down at Karkat when she says it. An entire row of fangs shine over her lip, nothing like sympathy. But hearing that acknowledged in words, as if there was any minuscule part of the universe that gave a fuck about him right now, unravels something deep inside his chest. It's all raw again, his misery and his anger, the throbbing of his joints and the aching in his throat.

The adult rests a hand lightly on his shoulder, and Karkat trembles. What he _wants_ to do is scream. She leans closer to him. "And it's far from over," she says.

The bench shifts as the man returns and sits on it, on the far end from Karkat. Karkat doesn't turn his head to look, but he can feel the man glowering in his peripheral vision. There's a double "clink" when the man sets down two dishes of something Karkat really doesn't want to think about.

"Besides, you know he'll make it up to you later." The woman pushes playfully at Karkat's chest. "Won't you, kid?"

Karkat curls his shoulders inward. When his head begins to drop, she moves her hand up, but Karkat catches himself first. He's realized by now that she never lets him look away when she's talking to him. "Well?"

Karkat hisses air between his teeth. His breath catches, turns it into a, "Yes."

"Yeah," she says. Her voice is flat with promise. "Yeah, you will."

She picks up the cuffs in both hands and twists them at the hinges, changing their shape. The metal bounces daylight around the cave when she moves them, and the adult makes no effort to keep the focused reflection away from his face. It stripes over his eye, and Karkat flinches. Spots dance in front of him. He blinks away the sting.

Karkat's hands are bunched in fists and pressed to his sides. They still don't entirely feel like part of him, after they'd been pulled away and locked immobile. He wishes desperately that there was something he could do to stop it from happening again, and then he's filled with self-loathing at how pathetically narrow even his most urgent desires have become.

Can't he wish that this is all just a nightmare, and really he and Ladeci had made it home before daybreak, and he's resting right now in his recuperacoon, and his intact shirt boasts honest lines of blue or yellow, or even maroon, and Troll Will Smith responds to his fanletters, and Troll Will Smith has promised to come rescue him if he ever needed it? But no, he can't. All those things seem equally impossible, too removed to even imagine.

The adult finishes reconfiguring the cuffs. The result is thinner and almost twice as long, and there are two flexible joints in the metal. They look fucking welcoming compared to before, and Karkat banishes the untrustworthy thought that they're not going to be as bad. Nothing has gotten _better_ for him.

So when she doesn't reach for his arms at all, and instead shuts one cuff around his ankle and bends his knee towards the bench behind him, the noise that escapes his lips is from _relief_. The adult reaches with the other end under the bench, searching for a place to clip it.

Karkat fights to keep the hope off his face. If they're worried he'll try to escape, doesn't that mean they're going to leave him _alone_?

The man's been silently and disapprovingly watching his partner. Now he says, "I wasn't aware you wanted a slave. If you can contain yourself, we're expected to reach Daugkzi Station two weeks after we're done on the planet." He pronounces "planet" with the same inflection the woman used earlier for "shithole." "It has a reasonable onsite market."

Behind Karkat, there's a "click." The woman backs out from the bench and brushes away sections of hair that had fallen into her eyes. Karkat tries pulling experimentally with his ankle, but it's held fast.

"I don't want a slave," she says. Whatever expression the man makes in response, she laughs. "Really, I mean it! All the approved races, they're so _alien_. I never have any fun with aliens." 

The adult climbs to her feet. She shakes the dust from her clothes before looking down at Karkat. She's grinning again, sharp and hungry, and Karkat feels pretty fucking stupid for thinking the ankle cuff was a good sign. The metal jingles when he tries reflexively to yank his foot further away.

The adult taps Karkat on the forehead again, forcefully enough that she pushes his head back if he doesn't resist, and of course he doesn't. She holds him in place with the tip of her finger, considering him from around the edges of her hand. Every breath Karkat takes is shallower than the one before.

Then the adult drops her hand and turns to her partner, disregarding Karkat entirely. As much as he hated being the object of her attention, now that he's suddenly _not_ he feels even more frightened, as well as confused and somehow diminished. It makes no sense at all.

The adult shrugs. "I can't get inside their heads," she says.

The woman swings a leg over the bench so she's sitting on it sideways and scoots up closer to her partner. Her back is to Karkat. He could reach her, even with his ankle chained down. He doesn't have a weapon, but if he extended his body far enough he could swing in with his own claws and sink them into her flesh.

Five green gashes against her black uniform, and the flare of pain in her eyes. He _could_.

But that's not fucking true, is it? He never uses his fingernails to fight, so he doesn't bother to keep their points from getting dull. It'd be a heroic feat if he even broke through her clothes. And Karkat's mind goes blank and cold rather than ponder the question of what she'd do to him afterwards.

The man hands her one of the supper dishes and holds the other in one hand above his knees. Karkat can't see beyond her shoulders, but he watches her bend in and hears the unmistakable ripping sound of flesh in teeth.

All Karkat can think about is how overwhelmingly glad he is they're not sharing with him. It actually smells really good, far better than anything Karkat's ever made for himself or his lusus. But knowing those roasted greenish lumps used to be Ladeci makes him never want to eat again.

Karkat's still half sprawled against the bench. His limbs are slack around him. When his eyes fall to them, he feels disgust at how weak and useless every single part of his body has proven itself to be, but he can't stand how open he's left himself.

He draws his arms and legs into himself, ignoring the cramping and burning of every stretching muscle. He can't extend the leg that's bent back and secured beside him, but when he rolls his hip, he can lift his knee enough to wrap his arms around it and pull it to his chest.

Karkat drops his head into the hollow between his knees. He's still acutely aware of the adults' presence off his side, but his circling forearms block out most of the daylight, so he can open his eyes fully. Bright spots still swim in front of him, slow to fade.

The smell isn't as strong anymore, either. Karkat presses his nose deeper into the cloth of his pants, until the smell of their dinner is filtered through the oily, earthy smell of cave grime and fabric he could stand to wash more often. There's also a small amount of blood, not his, and sex fluid, _not his_ , but it's still better. His body is responding to the promise of nearby food, reminding him that it's been a while since his last meal, especially if he's going to need energy to fight. As if he'll get a chance to fight. And his mouth is filling slowly with saliva, dislodging just enough of the sour film on his tongue and inside of his cheeks that the taste of it is stronger again.

And if Karkat hadn't been so _thrilled_ at the chance to rub Ladeci's face in what a lackwitted bulge-eater he was, none of this... Fuck, this is all Karkat's fault. He is the worst fucking friend. God, and it's _gross_ that he's getting hungry, no matter how great a cook that adult bitch is.

He swallows, and his mouth is sour and sticky. He could use some water. Except, no, that's the last thing he should want right now. If they do keep him around for days, he's eventually going to need to use the load gaper, and how that might go is another void in his imagination. Put it off as long as possible.

He can't _do_ this.

The adults have been chatting. Friendly white noise that Karkat hasn't been listening to. Now the man laughs, low and resonant, and the bench vibrates against Karkat's back. Karkat's legs twitch in front of him. Metal bites into his ankle, and he thinks that if he still had his sickle he would cut himself free.

And then what? He wouldn't be very fast on one foot, leaking a mutant bright trail to any possible hiding place, and the adults are _right there_. Even without the cuff, he knows he wouldn't be trying to escape.

Karkat hugs his legs tighter. Pain shoots over the curve of his body, but he doesn't care. The metal cuff forces his lower leg to a sideways angle, and the pull of it feels in his mind like sarcasm. Like she put it on as a fucking _joke_ , and the punchline is how truly, entirely pathetic he is.

Now both of the adults chuckle. Their last few comments filter through Karkat's memory. They're sharing anecdotes about an clumsy, yellow blooded threshecutioner who, if Karkat trusts the source, practises by prancing around with her sickle like she's in a Troll Jet Li movie.

Karkat has spent a lot of time prancing around with his sickle like he's in a Troll Jet Li movie. He should be paying attention, if he really thinks there's any chance they'll ever let him go, no matter how every word vibrates through his chest and leaves him hollow. Who knows what adult secrets they'll drop that could give him an advantage in an inevitable later battle to survive.

But Karkat can't even care that he _doesn't_ care. He clenches his fingers into fists and presses his face harder into his knees until he can't see anything but gray weave. If it wasn't for the adults' voices echoing around him, maybe he could pretend nothing existed outside of the dark, safe loop of his arms, but there's only so much bullshit his brain's willing to put up with from itself.

Karkat pulls his shoulders against his ears, muffling the sounds in the cave, but his strained shoulder muscles immediately shake with exhaustion. He can't keep them from falling again. The rest of his body trembles in sympathy, just as used up and on the edge of collapsing. Karkat hugs his legs and fights to stay upright. The texture of his pants rubs against the bruises on his chest, hiding the naked skin where his sign is supposed to be. His shuddering slowly tapers off, but he's not anything close to steady.

To his side, the woman's voice raises into a short, high trill. It's an approximation of a security alarm set off in her story by the inept threshecutioner, and it ends when the adults chuckle again. There's a nasty edge to their laughter, as they're mocking someone they have no respect for, and Karkat winces into his knees. He tells himself that they're not laughing at him, that they don't give a fuck about him right now, but that thought is somehow even more terrifying. He wants them to ignore him forever, but the length of his existence depends on how long the adults find him _worthy_ of their _attention_. If they decide Karkat is a boring, pointless piece of trash he's not exactly going to get a chance to argue otherwise.

The man starts another story about the worst piss-veined soldier ever to raise a sickle. Karkat's surprised at how well they're getting along, considering the glaring and snide remarks while they were _using_ him, but it's a surprise void of curiosity. It doesn't matter if he understands them, and he'd rather set himself on fire than think about it. Instead he tries to tune out their conversation and focus only on the hiss of his breath through fabric.

He pushes air through his teeth and then sucks it back, noting the contours of his breathing organ where it expands inside his chest. The air, filtered through his dirty pants, tastes stale. After a few minutes, the adults' conversation fades to a distant, meaningless rumble. Muscles in his back relax a little, exchanging their sharp twinges for other pains, easier to ignore, and he wedges his fingers between his knees to stop their grip from unravelling every time he stops paying attention.

Worst case scenarios, all of them shadowed with the certainty the woman is so much more practiced than Karkat at imagining how bad things can get for him, continue to run over and over through his brain. But they eventually begin to lose their vividness, like watching a horror movie on repeat until the suspense is sucked dry. The Karkat in his mind is dying slowly with an obsidian knife hilt-deep in his abdomen, but that Karkat is an idiot who didn't turn back when Karkat shouted at him not to go into a cave just before sunrise, how genre unsavvy do you even have to _be_?

Above him, the soldiers who've captured him are having grubcakes and tea served in cups made from the dainty skulls of a vanquished race. The man's crying blueberry tears over the plight of an animated advertising character. "I can still hear them taunting him. ' _Silly hopbeast, tiny rainbow colored breakfast pellets are for immature trolls!_ ' How come they just couldn't give him some cereal, instead of making him hunt down and rip open the kids who've eaten it?"

"You need to loosen up, Dien," the woman says. "And have some pity!" She passes a grubcake down to Karkat's reaching hand. Karkat thought it was green but up close he can see that it's red, weirdly red, like the baker had added extra coloring powder. His tongue and jaw are sore so Karkat takes out the knife from his abdomen and slides the cake directly into his digestive purse. Then Karkat stabs the knife back into his torso before the adult notices he moved it from where she left it. He tastes bitterness.

There's a noise, soft words and banging that echo in the cave. "Turn it up, this is my favorite song!" the woman says. The man grimaces, but he presses a button on his computer and they're surrounded by a high definition recording of Ladeci _screaming_. He's accompanied by short screeches and pinging sounds, and then a loud, low-pitched metallic clash--

Karkat jerks up into confused awareness. He bangs his back against the seat of the bench, pulls his cuffed ankle too far when he leans forwards, and then completely loses his balance and falls sideways in a tangle of flailing limbs. There's a shout ringing in his ears. Karkat only realizes it's his when he notices his mouth is still open.

Karkat fights the waiting knowledge of the situation he's woken into, but the metal cuff twisting his leg backwards is a hard reminder to ignore. He can't quite believe that he drifted asleep, or very near to it, while trussed down next to two adult soldiers. Never mind the lack of a recuperacoon.

He doesn't know how long he was zoned out for, but the adult trolls have vanished from the bench beside him. Karkat lets out a high pitched moan when it hits him that if he doesn't know where they are, they could be _anywhere_.

He twitches his eyes around the cave until he finds them, standing across the tunnel beside a strange, partially disassembled machine that hadn't been there before. The man is holding a hammer with a wide head, and the woman has a small display device clutched in her hand. They've both turned to look at him, and Karkat, too late, too fucking late, clamps his jaw shut into silence.

They look more solid than before. More detailed. Karkat wants to stab out his untrustworthy memory, which had apparently been so thrilled to play along with their mind-games it was inventing its own just to screw with him.

But no, that's not it. The tunnel's still filled with reflected daylight, but it's dimmed so that opening his eyes doesn't feel like blinking through drops of acid. Everything around him has lost its glittering, unreal halo. The sun must not be pointed directly into the mouth of the cave any longer. Karkat doesn't know what that means. Is it even still morning? Is there some clue in the angles of the indistinct shadows that pool around the larger objects? Fucking caves. Fuck them up the nostril with a drill-headed burrowing vehicle.

Now that Karkat has shut the hell up, the adults dismiss him from their attention. They're facing the machine again. They continue a conversation punctuated by gestures at the woman's display, and then the man hefts his hammer and swings it to clash loudly against a large metal panel propped against the cave wall.

Karkat probably would have shouted again at the noise if his teeth weren't locked so tightly together. He still jumps sideways, which he immediately regrets. He's suddenly acutely aware of his body, aching and stiff from sleeping in an awkward position. His joints burn, and his body throbs with bruises. They've darkened over his arms and chest, so that his skin looks almost mottled. The blackest is still the one from his fight with his lusus, but there's a sharp, bone-deep pain buried in its center, from a spot the shape of an adult-sized thumb-print. His throat stings when he swallows, when he breathes.

The hammer bangs again, and its vibrations echo through the air and the stone of the cave floor. Karkat starts to push himself back up, but the complaining of his body turns to screaming when he tries to move so many muscles at once. Instead he just shuffles backwards until his shoulders rest against the cool metal support for the bench. The edge of the seat extends over his face. It's almost like shelter.

Karkat tries to let his exhaustion drag him back into sleep. It's the only escape available. But the hammer crashes again and again, not to any predictable rhythm, and it startles him every time. Karkat shifts his head to find a spot where neither horn touches the ground or the bench. His neck and shoulders are uncomfortable, but it's nothing compared to the raw vibration.

Finally the woman makes a celebratory noise. The time since the last hammer fall grows longer and longer, until Karkat finally allows himself to hope it won't crash again. And it doesn't, but as Karkat watches the adults stretch and laugh and place the hammered sheet onto their machine, he realizes it's because they're _finished_. And after a brief glance at their handiwork, they break off and head back towards Karkat.

Karkat tenses. He presses his back against the metal support of the bench and squeezes as much of his body under the seat as possible. His leg restraint rattles as he fights to fully extend his knee. It's a joke. It's not like he's hiding from them, but he still scrambles for every extra inch of enclosure.

When the man reaches his seat, he glowers at Karkat's intensely visible body pressed against the length of the bench. His lip raises so high in disgust that the root of one fang shows, and Karkat would move the hell away except that his limbs don't seem to be responding to his panicked commands. But then the man glances over at his partner, flattens his mouth into a grim line, and simply seats himself at the very edge of the bench, which part Karkat apparently hadn't yet despoiled with his touch.

Karkat starts breathing again, desperate and shaky. The relief is a fucking _lie_ , but it _feels_ real. At least for a brief moment, shattered when the female adult returns from whatever detour slowed her.

There's nowhere to go, physically or emotionally. Karkat's jaw hurts from the effort to stay quiet. She's going to yank him out. Or she's going to order him to crawl out to her by himself. And he'd do it. He _would_. It doesn't even matter what she actually does, because they both know exactly how cooperative he's going to be, just given a fucking chance to prove it.

She doesn't move for a few seconds, just _stands_ there, less a yard from Karkat's head, so that he can't see much more of her than standard black military boots. He struggles to resign himself to whatever is going to come next, to _accept_ he can't do anything to change it, but it only leaves him feeling _more_ desperate.

He grasps for the details of the moment he's in, as if that would let him remain in it. The ground and bench make an open "C" around him, painful where they support him, but oh so welcome that thinking of leaving is like thinking of dying. In front of him, Karkat's hand clutches half-closed at its own fuzzy shadow. The scent of the man's sweat wafts down, no doubt because of his exertion with the hammer.

And Karkat knows that smell so intimately now. He'd want to retch if it wasn't _worse_ thinking about what'd come back _up_.

And the woman...

She spins on a heel, away from Karkat, and pulls out her purple and green leather chair. She jumps into it, taking a loose, cross-legged sitting form that doesn't hold together very well through the chair's extended bouncing. She locks eyes on the other adult, and it's like Karkat isn't even there.

"Hey, Dien! Catch!" She tosses a blue bottle towards the bench in an easy underhand pass, and Karkat hears the slap of a successful interception. She's kept another blue bottle for herself. Some sort of flavored juice drink. The adults are taking a work break.

Karkat should be so fucking grateful she passed him over. And he is, he can't _help_ it, but the horror of anticipation hardens between his shoulders like a punch in the chest. His eyes sting threateningly, nothing to do with the light.

Karkat breathes deeply until the need to cry passes. Even this weakness he's willing to be grateful for, because it gives him something else to think about while the adults chat right above his head. They're talking about the machine, Karkat guesses, all part names and measurements he doesn't understand.

He wonders if that means they don't have to kill him for their secrets, or if they don't care because they never were going to let him out alive. He fights off another wave of tears.

The woman pauses in conversation to bite the lid off of her bottle. Her teeth snap easily through the plastic, but it's still messier than screwing it off like a normal person would. She has to wipe thin blue trickles of juice from her lips, which she does with a fang-edged grin. The man trails off mid sentence.

Are those assholes _flirting_ with each other? No. Oh fuck no. Karkat couldn't handle them trying to fill quadrants with him chained in the middle. No no no no no fuck god please _no_.

There's a soft noise from something bouncing on the ground near his face. It's the woman's bitten-off bottle cap. It rolls back and forth in a smaller and smaller crescent beside his cheek, and Karkat's utterly confused about how it got there. At least it's a mystery he's willing to think about.

There are a few drops of juice still inside, and this close Karkat can smell that they're eel blood flavored. One of Karkat's favorites, actually. He still has half a container of the cheap concentrate crap in the thermal hull back at his hive. Karkat wonders with bleak humor if his lusus will clue in to his disappearance when no one sneaks in to drink any today. Or tomorrow. Or...

He can't remember why that was supposed to be funny.

Another noise, but when he looks there's not a new bottle cap. Karkat glances up towards the woman, and then he flinches away from the object flying through the air at him. It's a pebble, he belatedly recognizes. The pebble bounces harmlessly off the skin on his upper arm.

The adults have segued from machine talk to more gossip about people Karkat will never meet. The woman is parodying an ineffectual bureaucrat, and she folds her fingers in for a clawless, mocking gesture. Then she takes a new pebble from her other hand and glances down at Karkat. She sights playfully with one winked eye and lines the pebble up to what might be the elastic of a slingshot, except it would have to be invisible... Invisible. Right.

This pebble bounces off Karkat's forehead. Now that he knows what's going on, he doesn't care that he's being used for target practice. The tiny stones don't hurt, not enough to notice, and in a sick way this mild attention is _better_ than having her ignore him like he's _nothing_. Like he's a rock, or a part of the metal bench, or worse, some idiot troll kid who'd proved himself _useless_ , unworthy of her regard. If she wants to entertain herself by tossing pebbles at him all day Karkat is going to be the best fucking pebble target she ever threatened to slice open with a knife.

The adult stares at Karkat until he returns it, and then she rotates her head slowly, meaningfully, to one side. Karkat copies the movement, even though it means he's stuck looking at the flat gray underside of the seat. Not being able to see as much of the cave makes his pathetic refuge feel suddenly five times smaller, but it's fine. He can deal with it. It's no problem at all.

A pebble bounces off his cheek. There's a break for half a minute, and then another pebble comes down and hits his horn. It echoes unpleasantly across his skull, but that's fine too. At this point Karkat is a fleet-class champion in _unpleasant_.

The adult must have found her spot, because out of the next four stones, three knock against his exposed horn. It's more irritating than painful, still, but Karkat grits his teeth at how naive he'd been two minutes ago, when he was hoping to do this for _hours_.

The man makes a comment Karkat doesn't listen to, but the woman shrieks in laughter. Karkat rolls his eyes to the edge of their sockets, so he can see without moving his head. The woman is leaning forward, bouncing lightly in her chair. The pebble game is forgotten, at least for the moment, and Karkat's still echoing horn doesn't exactly mind.

"No!" she says. Her voice is pitched high with laughter. "C'mon, Dien! You can't talk to Baten. That fucker's got Malchek's horns shoved farther up his ass than Caycai does!" She laughs again, and now the man joins in with a low rumbling chuckle.

The woman shakes her head and looks up to say something more, but she immediately trails off.

"Hey," she says. Contemplative. "You think that's actually possible?"

The adult tosses the remainder of her pebbles down to scatter on the cave floor. Then she launches herself off her chair, landing smoothly on her feet. Karkat notices the decapitated bottle of juice bouncing across the vacated seat cushion before the adult puts the whole thing back into her captchalogue deck. Even if the bottle is empty, there must still be droplets left to spray out and stain the leather.

It's so _careless_ , and while Karkat is hardly a beacon of scrupulous tidiness, watching the adult treat her things with such casual disregard fills him with a horror he doesn't want to examine very closely.

She bends down in front of the bench and wraps her hand around one of Karkat's forearms. She doesn't quite yank him out from his inadequate cover, but she pulls his arm firmly and still faster than he wants to move. Which is not one fucking inch per perigee.

When he's slid most of the way out, she starts to pull upwards on his arm, and Karkat climbs up after it, leveraging himself into a sitting position. His body is stiff and sore, slow to respond, but the adult is patient with him. She only jerks painfully with his arm once, when he twists his other elbow in the process of pushing his torso upright and, gasping, stops moving entirely.

It takes almost half a minute before he's finally balanced on his ass, at which point the man makes a low growling noise and shifts his legs away from Karkat's position. As though _now_ , after everything he forced Karkat to _do_ , the very possibility of some dirty lowblood child touching him is an unimaginable debasement.

Karkat looks down and away, until he can't see the man except in the edges of his vision. He _feels_ like a dirty, used up piece of crap. His mouth tastes foul and the rest of him is sticky, sore, signless, and he can still never manage to ignore the pulse of repugnant mutant red moving under his skin. He tells himself he's being an idiot when they've _done_ this to him, but it's still too hard to not think that the man might be right.

The woman reaches for the cuff at his ankle and unclasps it. His skin feels cool and strangely light at the thin circle where the metal loop had closed around his leg. He'd hated it. But he desperately wishes it was still there, because whatever is about to happen next, he's certain it won't be as pleasant as being chained to a bench and forgotten.

The adult brushes Karkat's bangs away from his face. She does it _gently_ , with only the soft pads of her fingers running across his forehead, but when they slide into his hairline she clenches her hand into a fist and drags his face up so he's looking at her.

"Guess what, kid," she says. "You're going to help me with an experiment."

Karkat can't hold onto his confusion for more than a second before the trailing end of the adult's conversation replays itself in his mind. Then he freezes, his entire body tensing in visceral refusal. Karkat knows he can't afford to say anything, but he pleads with his eyes, desperate and terrified and all the _no_ he can fit into them.

The adult's face becomes an exaggerated mask of open friendliness. She raises her eyebrows as if inviting him to share any opinions he might have about the upcoming events in his life. Karkat drops his gaze. He struggles for one shaky breath after another.

"Let's go."

She grabs onto Karkat's shoulder and stands up, bringing him with her. She starts walking, and Karkat staggers along in a daze beside her. He trips several times on the rough cave floor and catches his weight on the hand holding him up. It hurts, but everything hurts.

He doesn't notice right away when she stops, and he stumbles again when his legs continue on without his upper body. Karkat glances up at the adult, and she looks _annoyed_ with him. He'd thought he was as terrified as it was possible to be, but now it's like his soul turns to solid ice.

She lifts her hand from his shoulder in a sharp movement. "You can walk," she reminds him. Her voice is flat and unimpressed.

Of course Karkat can fucking walk. His legs are stiff and bruised, but putting one foot in front of the other isn't difficult. It's being forced to _pay attention_ that has him ready to collapse. While the adult was half-dragging him across the ground, he could hang on, if only for a few seconds longer, to the mind-deadening weight on the other side of panic. But the adult is taking even that from him.

She points a finger towards the newly hammered machine, and when Karkat just stares dumbly after it, the adult narrows her eyes and snarls, "Move it." Karkat trembles under her dissatisfaction, but he doesn't know how to _fix it_ except to do what she tells him. He immediately continues walking in the direction the adult had jabbed through the air, and she follows so close that Karkat can feel her blocking the movement of air behind him.

Karkat wobbles a little in his path, but most of that is fear of what will happen when he has to stop. Resting has at least given all the pieces of his body a chance to remember how they usually fit together. For as long as that's going to last.

When they approach the machine Karkat hesitates unconsciously, slowing down, and the adult shoves him forward so hard that he loses his balance and has to catch himself on the metal. Then before he can recover, she grabs his shoulder and spins him around so the siding presses cool lines into his midback. She looks down at him dispassionately and says, "Stay here."

The adult lets go, shoving him a little into the machine as she does, just because she can. She strides over to a new purple cube hunkered beside the mechanic's furnace. Which is on again, Karkat notices, although he doesn't smell anything _cooking_. Maybe they're using it this time for its intended purpose? But no, he really doesn't care at all.

The machine Karkat's standing against has sections still missing from its siding, and he can see sharp-toothed gears and pistons in the shadows. They're not moving, but he clenches his arms and fingers reflexively to his sides. Across the cave, the adult breaks the seal on the purple cube, dispersing the scent of coolant and cold meat. It's a small thermal hull. Has she decided to take a quick break for a _snack_?

She searches through the cube briefly, and it's obvious when she finds what she wants because her face lights up like sunrise over salt water. She telegraphs every microscopic brainwave that passes through her diseased think pan like she's taken data space out in the Imperial Broadcast, and normally Karkat would wonder how she survived through the grub stage but right now he's actually kind of glad for it. It's hell enough trying to keep her _happy_ with him when he _knows_ if she is.

Or isn't.

The adult seems to be pulling at something. There's a crunching, cracking noise from inside the thermal hull, and then she shuts the cube and steps away. Her hands are empty, although there's a thin green liquid staining one. She wipes it off on her pants.

She walks back towards Karkat. She's grinning at him now. Her eyes are hungry with anticipation of whatever she has planned, and Karkat tells himself that this is _better_ than when she was annoyed with him. It is. It has to be.

The adult doesn't stop until she's right beside him. She bends to one knee and wraps a hand, not tightly, but firmly, around the curve where his shoulder meets his throat. She touches the fingertips of other hand to the collage of bruises on his naked chest, and then she slowly brings her fingers down over his torso. The points of her fingernails scratch lightly over his skin, trailing lines only visible in his imagination.

She's done this to him _already_ , even if before her fingers had been travelling up. But now she's not taking the time to _explore_ , although she still pauses to prod at a couple darker bruises. Karkat begins to curl his shoulders inward, but the adult tightens her grip on his neck and pushes him upright.

Her hand moves diagonally over his abdomen until they reach the edge where his pants rest over his hip. She curls her fingers so that their claws slide between the waistband and his skin, and Karkat's breath catches in a high, desperate moan. The adult keeps grinning at him, and it suddenly seems like she has twice as many teeth.


	4. Chapter 4

There's a banging noise from across the cave. Karkat glances over, seizing the distraction. The man has slammed his computer onto the metal bench again. "No!" he says.

Karkat's knees waver in a rush he can't tell is hope or relief. It's absurd. The male adult isn't interested in helping him, Karkat _knows_ that, but...

"Get him away from the reactor shell!" the man shouts. "I'm not going to fix it again!"

...Karkat _knows_ , but having even that absurd hope ripped away leaves him feeling more defeated than a moment ago. He wouldn't have guessed it was possible.

The woman doesn't look upset with her partner. She's giving him a milder version of that same predatory, considering grin Karkat would rip from her face if it didn't petrify him entirely. 

"Yeah, okay," she says.

She stands up and yanks Karkat in front of her. There's a moment of quiet as she scans over the tunnel. Her hand is warm on Karkat's skin, and her fingertips prick his neck. He can feel the movement of her breathing against his shoulderblades.

Then the adult makes a decision. She marches him towards a nearby boulder, only half broken from the cave wall, and pushes him down on it.

Karkat lands on his back at a sloping angle. He begins to slide down the rough stone, but the adult grabs the waistline of his pants and hefts him up. She positions him so the top half of his body is draped over the boulder and his legs dangle, unsupported. The toes of his shoes brush lightly on the cave floor.

He tries to stretch his legs so he can put weight on them, but the adult kicks a few times at one of his heels. Karkat forces his lower body to relax, letting his feet swing through the air when she pushes at his ankle with her boot, but this doesn't seem to be what she wants either.

Finally the adult reaches down and grabs Karkat's upper leg. He flinches. He's too sickeningly aware of both her hands. One set of her fingers are searching for a solid grip on inside of his thigh, and the others are still hooked inside the top of his pants to hold him in place. Her claws are smooth arrowheads pressed flat to his abdomen.

He digs his own fingernails into the side of the stone. The vibration grates uselessly through the bones of his hands. No one's ever touched him like this before and he doesn't want it and there's nothing he can do to get her off of him. He's helpless to even fucking try.

The adult moves her grip down his leg, and she pulls his leg further into the air as she goes. When she gets below his knee, she bends it so that she doesn't have to stretch. She grabs the heel of his shoe and starts to pull it loose.

Karkat cooperates, anchoring his foot against the directions she's tugging. She's not bothering to be gentle, and he's sure she really wouldn't be upset if she left him with a twisted ankle. The shoe comes neatly off, taking his sock with it, and his toes curl in the sudden coolness of atmosphere.

She drops the leg and props up his other one, quickly removing his remaining shoe. His bare feet hang beside the stone, awkward and vulnerable, but the adult leaves them alone. Instead she leans forward and wraps a second fist around the top of his pants.

And it's _not difficult_ to undo his pants, or even to simply slide them off. Karkat rarely bothers to fasten and unfasten them properly. But the adult yanks her fists apart until Karkat hears the fabric rip between her claws. His body drifts sideways as she pulls, and the adult wedges her knee into his hip to keep him in place.

She removes his pants piece by destroyed piece, which she tosses away to drift down to the floor like forgotten gray flags. There's no point to it, except that the adult seems to enjoy how Karkat winces every time she tears off a new section. And she's still done too soon, and Karkat is lying entirely naked on the stone.

The adult looks down, running her gaze over the display of his exposed body. Karkat can't stand the appraisal in her eyes. He turns his head towards the cave wall instead. His hand rests near the crack where the boulder comes away from it. His skin almost disappears into the gray of the stone, camouflaged, except for the fingernails that almost glow orange in the light. If he could mask those somehow, rip them from his bones, maybe he would be invisible. Maybe he could even hide.

The adult takes one of her hands off his body, and Karkat glances miserably over to see what's changed. She's taking something out of her captchalogue deck. It is, Karkat sees with a disgusted, unsurprised horror, one of Ladeci's horns. The baking process has left it duller orange and cragged.

Ladeci had awful teeth, but he'd had great horns. They tapered elegantly from a wide base, and they curved only slightly as they rose above his head. One of them had a thick bulb near its tip that would have probably resolved into an extra spur if he'd lived long enough.

Karkat hated them, although truthfully it was just envy. They were way better than Karkat's pair. Not like that's very hard. Even the people Karkat knows with horns nearly as short as his at least have theirs tipped with respectable points.

The adult turns the disembodied horn in her hand, examining it from different angles. She takes her other hand off Karkat, although she jams her knee harder into Karkat's side to remind him not to move. It's not necessary. Karkat is pretty clear on the fact that he's not going anywhere without her explicit _order_.

She takes another knife from her index. This one's long and matte gray steel. The adult flicks a switch on the hilt, and a line along the knife's cutting edge glows red. Karkat can feel it as a point of heat, but even with the stone stealing the warmth from his chest, he wishes it was further away.

The adult cuts the tip from Ladeci's horn. The knife slices easily through, leaving behind a stench like burning hair. The point falls to the floor with a dull thud. She then changes the angle of the horn and carves away the sharp edges of the new plateau.

When she blows off the orange dust, Karkat can see the resulting curve. Is that what she did to her own horns? It's almost too horrible to think about, but Karkat takes some grim satisfaction from the knowledge she'd been in extreme pain at one point in her life. Probably. Still not _enough_.

The knife blinks away and between it and the mutilated horn she's now holding _no_ sharp objects above him. But that's not reassuring at all, because now she's going to...

She bounces the horn in her hand and looks down at him. Her grin still looks hungry, and Karkat feels like a piece of meat she's laid out on a slab for butchering. And considering what happened to Ladeci, that's exactly what he is. He breathes out in a distressed moan.

The adult smacks him in the forehead with the horn, just hard enough to surprise him. She doesn't take it away, just lets it sit between his eyes. Karkat can still smell the cauterized bone.

"Fuck it, you're a whiny one," she says. She walks the horn slowly down his face, prodding halfheartedly at his cheekbone, at one of his nostrils. "And sure, I appreciate that kind of thing, but I haven't done _shit_ to you yet." The horn presses against the corner of his mouth, shifts back and forth. She's working it into his lips.

Karkat holds his breath. It's the only way to keep himself silent right now.

The adult gets the end of the horn between his lips and spins it in a circle, grinding against his teeth. "So tell me kid, if you're going to start whimpering now, how am I supposed to know when you _mean_ it?"

She taps the bone on his teeth a few times. Tilts her head. Says lightly, "You think I could get you to swallow _this_ horn?" Karkat keeps quiet with huge effort, but the adult slams the horn harder against his jaw. "That one I expect you to answer."

If he opens his mouth to speak, Karkat's terrified she'd take it as an invitation. He nods instead, his head shaking up and down as much as he can with the horn pressing it into the boulder. He keeps his gaze locked on hers. The way she likes him to.

The adult seems amused. Karkat can't tell if it's with him or herself. "Yeah, that's right. It wouldn't be hard at all. But I won't."

She pulls the horn out of his lips, and Karkat lets himself breathe again, deep shuddering gasps that he's careful to keep silent. He doesn't want to think about her implication, but at least this is something to focus on. Something he can control. He doubts it'll change one fucking thing but if she wants him to shut the fuck up, he'll be as quiet as he can. Until. Until he can't. Until.

The adult touches the horn to Karkat's chest and slides it down the length of his torso, and Karkat doesn't give a fuck. When she reaches his genitals, she pokes the horn at the side his seedflap, just in case Karkat missed she was there.

Karkat's fingers and feet twitch against the stone. She didn't hurt him, but it feels gross and _wrong_. He drops his neck back and rolls his eyes up so he's watching the other side of the cave instead of what's happening to his body.

Most of the machines have been activated now. The male adult is working, upside down in Karkat's view, and making a point of ignoring what his partner is doing. But as the man gestures sharply on his tablet, he's still displaying a lot of teeth.

The woman moves the blunt tip down, just slightly further, until she reaches his nook. She pushes, gently, at the opening, and Karkat jerks in reflexive panic. His legs curl up to protect himself, but the adult swats them back down. The knee closest to the cave wall bangs into the rock, and his leg flares, throbbing, down to his toes. Karkat clenches his jaw shut, swallowing his yell, and forces his legs to relax again, inch by inch.

When his toes once more brush against the ground, the adult runs the thumb of her empty hand softly over the curve of his hip, petting him again. She does it several times, and maybe it would be a soothing gesture if she was Karkat's lusus, but she's not. She's _not_. His muscles twitch away from her touch, and it's a mocking joke of a soothing gesture because if she wanted to help she would stop doing it.

She would stop doing so much.

There's a glint of crystals in one upside-down cave hollow, and Karkat tries to narrow his focus to block everything else from his mind. He can't stop what she's doing to him, but maybe he can attempt to ignore it, pretend his body doesn't exist beyond the inside of his eyes. He's not any good at it, but it works a little. His breathing begins to slow, leaving behind an empty ache in his chest. He tries to ignore that, too.

The adult lifts her hand off his hip. She slides the horn away from his nook, and Karkat wants to moan, this time in relief. He doesn't. Even when she stops moving the horn again, using it to put pressure on the opening of his asshole, it's almost tolerable in comparison. This is what he was _expecting_.

She presses harder, wiggling the end through small side to side motions. Karkat tries to brace himself. He tries to think about nothing but the glittering corner in his vision. He finds that he really can't do both at the same time.

For leverage, the adult leans her free hand on his abdomen, just above his seedflap. She pushes with the horn until it finally gets past the outer ring of muscle and starts to actually enter his ass.

It's immediately too big, too much, stretching him open. Karkat's eyes go wide and he sucks air through his teeth. The muscles inside his ass clench to fight the intrusion, but that only makes it hurt more. She pushes the horn further in, still slowly, still wiggling it back and forth, and it still feels like she's going to rip him open. The lines in the bone catch on the skin of his inner walls, which get pulled along when the adult tries to get it deeper.

There's no way she's going to shove the entire horn in without tearing him apart, and Karkat realizes this is it, this is how it ends for him, an adult fucking him up the ass with his dead friend's horn until he bleeds enough she'll notice. It's such an perverse, awful, _stupid_ death. Which he guesses is the perfect punchline to his perverse, awful, stupid _life_.

The adult pauses, then starts working the horn back out. Karkat is confused, unless she's already injured him badly enough that he's bleeding. But when he lifts his head, he sees that she's frowning at a horn unstained with red.

"Yeah," she tells him, when she sees him looking over. "This isn't working at all." She sounds almost apologetic, as if stabbing him in the guts from the bottom up is a project they're approaching together with camaraderie and mutual fucking effort.

After a few thoughtful moments she says, "Hey, Dien! Where's the motor grease?"

"I imagine," says the man, and there's a level of vibration in this voice that buzzes menacingly along Karkat's horns, "that it remains where you last put it. Unless you did eventually see fit to put it away properly, in which case it still remains where you last put it."

The woman drops a wink down at Karkat, and Karkat thinks that the next time she gets close enough he's going to rip her throat out with his teeth. And then, of course, he despises himself for the lie.

"Hold this for me, okay?" she says. The adult puts the disembodied, maimed horn down on Karkat's skin, balancing it on the crease where Karkat's thigh meets his torso.

The horn begins to roll off him, so Karkat turns his leg inwards until it catches. The strain of keeping his leg in that position pulls along the line of his body up to his shoulder, and it's a struggle to keep it from falling again. It would be easier to simply reach over and hold the piece of bone in place with his hand, but Karkat can't deal with the thought of touching it with his fingers, his palm. With any part of his skin where he has a _choice_.

The adult has wandered away to the half-covered machine. She bends momentarily, and when she stands she's brandishing a round black canister like its recovery is an exciting achievement. As she meanders back to Karkat, she shakes the container fast enough that he can't read the label. He doesn't care. It probably just says "engine grease," anyway.

She stops next to the boulder, in the same spot she left from. Her leg presses, softly but oppressively, against the side of Karkat's hip. The sense of dangling, exposed and open, fades, but Karkat's returning it for a worse feeling, like he's suffocating, like there's no escape. Like escape was ever going to be an option for him.

The adult picks up the horn, and Karkat can finally let his leg relax, though it keeps trembling for a few more moments in memory of the effort. Then she flicks off the canister lid and sprays the contents. Thick, black goop splurges out, covering the orange bone and splattering heavy drops on the boulder and the top of Karkat's thigh. He winces every time one lands on him, hitting his skin with a quiet, wet slap and leaning to gravity in a viscous trickle.

When she's done, the adult puts away the canister and extends her arm in the direction of his face, as though offering her handiwork for inspection. Karkat stretches his neck away. Most of the orange bone is hidden, but the surface is coated in a thick oily blackness that clumps and slides off in slow, erratic drips. And Karkat still _knows_ what's underneath, and he knows that it's going back inside him.

"Let's try this again," the adult says. "Should be just like taking a shit, right? Only backwards."

She leans further into his hip and puts her hand low on his torso again, supporting some of her weight. Karkat rolls his head back so all he can see is the ceiling and the tunnel behind him. He tries to pretend he isn't aware of anything happening to the lower half of his body, but he can't hold onto the illusion. Especially when the adult presses the round end of the horn against his ass again, and this time it's cold and slick.

But the machine lubricant actually seems to help, because now it slides more easily through his asshole. As the adult works it into him, there's the same unpleasant stretching, the same knowledge of something unwelcome slowly exploring upwards, but at least it doesn't feel like his insides are going to scrape and tear.

She reaches the same point as her first attempt and keeps going. The stretching, too full sensation becomes more intense, cramping, burning, even when he puts all his remaining energy into forcing his muscles to unclench, to not fight her.

His breath hitches, and Karkat tries to keep his gasping as silent as possible, but he's sure it's not _enough_. His breathing becomes even more shaky as he waits for her to react, but the seconds tick by and she _doesn't_. She just keeps shoving the bone up his ass, and it hurts, and it's terrible in ways Karkat never even fucking imagined, but he knows she was going to do it anyway.

What Karkat doesn't know is if this means she's too engrossed by his current torment to punish him right away, or if it means he has her implied fucking permission to scream now, if this ranks bad enough on the scale from ripping out his own teeth to sunbathing while an imaginary musclebeast stomps on his limbs and pisses in his eye sockets.

The adult is still shifting the horn side to side, but it doesn't seem to be getting much deeper. Karkat hopes it's done, but instead the adult starts to rotate it. The slight curve is starting to be an issue, or maybe it needs to bend _more_ , Karkat's not exactly an expert in the mechanics involved. His body demands to bear down against it, but he doesn't have any leverage, can't find anything to hold onto. His fingers scrabble futilely on the stone.

The adult is done twisting. She leans further over him, pressing heavier on his abdomen, and forces it in again. The horn moves, climbing at a new angle. And then it gets stuck inside him, pushing in a direction where nothing yields, and she doesn't stop. She jiggles the horn, increases pressure... and Karkat screams before he can remember not to. It's a sharp, mind-numbing flare of pain. He screams and even after he wrenches his mouth shut, the noise echoes in the cave like an accusation.

But the adult doesn't look irritated with him. She's stopped working at the bone, and she might actually be surprised by his reaction. Karkat doesn't know how to get his mind around the possibility she hadn't _meant_ to hurt him. It doesn't fit within the known laws of the universe.

He doesn't have to deal with the confusion for very long. There's only a beat where they stare stare uncertainly at each other, and then she grins and prods the end of the horn into the same spot. 

Karkat cries out, and when she does it again, harder, he cries out again. She keeps it there, maintaining the pressure, and Karkat isn't even bothering to try not to scream anymore. He doesn't know if she's stabbed a hole inside him, or if she's pushing against one of the organ channels that empty into his intestines, or if all this pain is just because the horn isn't going to fit. His back arcs over the boulder and his feet slam into the side and he can't think through the burning. He's going die like this after everything and it's not _fair_ and no one's even going to notice that he's gone.

"Hey, kid," the adult says. "Yo. Hey." But fuck her. Fuck her up the ass just like she's doing to him right now.

She slides the horn out just enough to loosen the pressure inside him, and Karkat gasps and shudders, still groggy from pain. " _Hey. Kid_." She starts to wiggle it back up, slowly. Threateningly.

And Karkat gives her all the wide eyed, desperate focus he has. "Glad to see you've joined me," she says, and she still has way too many long, sun-highlighted teeth. "Now pay some attention to what the fuck you're doing."

Karkat doesn't understand. He's not doing anything. Is he supposed to be? There isn't anything for him to do. But then his eyes begin to process the scene in front of his face. His hands are raised to her arm and shoulder. At this moment they're simply resting against her jacket, but he must have been clawing mindlessly at her, or at least trying to push her away.

Karkat clutches his arms back to his chest. "No," he says, "no no fuck no please I didn't," and he can't breathe, and his words are tripping over each other, and he's choking on them, "oh fuck I'm sorry I'm so I didn't mean it I fuck sorry no no no oh god no."

She lets go of the horn in his ass and puts that hand, black and sticky, on his shoulder. The horn slides a little away from whatever it was pressing into, and Karkat trembles because it feels so much better, and because he was caught struggling, he's broken the _rules_ , and he's certain what's about to come will be unimaginably worse.

The adult places the palm of her cleaner hand on his jaw and stretches her fingerspan from his temple down to his neck. She angles his head so that he can't look away from her. Her hand is warmer than the air, but as it rests longer on his skin, he begins to feel the underlying coolness of her richer blood.

"I'm sorry," Karkat says. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. _Please_."

"Yeah," the adult says. She runs her fingertips gently through the fringe above his ear. "Shhh, yeah, I know." She's smiling at him, she's always smiling at him, and Karkat wishes it was pity but it's not. She looks pleased. Smug. "I know you didn't mean to. You're so _docile_. So here, I'm going to do you a favor."

When she lifts her hand off his face, the outline of her fingers remains warm on his cheek, slow to fade. She takes hold of the other side of his chest and twists him up and sideways into a half sitting position. Karkat lets her, pliant as a doll, as a dead thing, as someone with no resistance left. She folds his closest arm behind his back and then puts him down so that, while both hips are lying on the boulder, his chest is resting on that one shoulder. He's turned to face the inside of the cave, but there's not much he's interested in looking at.

She knocks his other arm down so his wrists fall together. Karkat's pretty sure he knows what her _favor_ is going to be, and the thing, the fucking thing of it is that he's already grateful. So unbelievably grateful, he'd beg her if she asked and mean every syllable. Please restrain his arms again, please, _please_ , because they'll betray him otherwise, he's obviously too weak to control them on his own.

Karkat waits for her to retrieve the metal cuffs, but she just stands there and fidgets in the empty air. Karkat watches in confusion until she leans over him and catches one wrist in the edge of an invisible loop. Of course.

She guides his other hand in with it. Karkat holds his wrists close so she can tighten the loop, but instead she pushes him over onto his back. His trapped arm and shoulder strain under him, but at this point that's a familiar, almost nostalgic pain.

The circle of invisible rope is still several times too big, and when Karkat finds the invisible knot, it's one that won't tighten. It was never meant to tie his arms safely away, he realizes. Not unless he's actively holding on. Cooperating. Being fucking _docile_.

The adult leans back over his hip and grabs the horn. Karkat feels it moving inside him as she repositions her hand. He clenches his jaw in anticipation of the pain he knows is going to come. One of his arms is weighted down under his back, but he loops his other wrist through the psychic rope over and over until there's no slack where he can unthinkingly slip free.

She starts pushing up once more, slowly wiggling the horn further in. Karkat's whole body is shaking with the effort to lay, quiet and still, on the boulder. He braces himself as much as he can and clenches the imaginary rope in his fists. His nails press on it, but it's much smoother than a _real_ rope. There's no texture to dig into.

The adult glances for a moment at his wrists. Her grin quirks in satisfaction. Karkat suddenly wonders if she can _feel_ along her psychic rope like a true extension of her body. God, probably. He's not just enthusiastically making himself even more helpless, he's tangling his arms inside a piece of her, pressing the rope around his wrists and hands where she can better sense every desperate twitch and surrender.

Karkat wants to rip his hands loose, but he makes them clench tighter. He tells himself it doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything. He can't afford even that freedom right now, not unless he's really ready to give up.

The wall of his ass stings more as the horn gets close to the same spot as before, and Karkat has to remind himself that he's _not_ ready to give up. It would be easy, so easy, all he'd have to do is swing a leg at her, or open his mouth and say, "No". Sure, and then she'd torture him to death, but at least he could let go. At least he'd _know_ it was the end.

Instead, he lifts his lip to scowl at her. She's not looking at his face, which is the only reason he's willing to try it. For a second his expression feels like a badly fitted mask, as the sole emotion behind it is terror, and it doesn't match. But then he's flooded with the familiar weight of anger, hot and solid. He squeezes the invisible rope as tight as he can, driving his claws into the side. He hopes she fucking _can_ feel it.

The horn slides next to the spot that had left him screaming, and Karkat readies himself for the pain, he can get through it, that psychotic asshole isn't going to break him like _this_... and then the horn keeps moving, in a slightly different direction.

The side of the bone scrapes the sore point inside him, and the exploring tip stretches a new part of his ass, and it hurts, but it's nothing compared to what she did to him before. Karkat's relief is cut with suspicion, because he doesn't trust her not to backtrack and try again, and with an odd, unsteadying disappointment. As if he had been prepared to throw his weight against a locked door, only to have it swing open when he reached it, leaving him to topple off-balance to the floor.

He actually catches himself thinking his current situation _isn't that bad_ before he has time to get angry again. Mostly at his own think pan for entertaining such a disgusting idiotic idea, how would _it_ like to be wrenched backwards over a cave's stone bulge while an adult bitch probes into the _other_ end of its digestive tube. And his throat is still sore. Although who knows, maybe that's just all the fucking screaming.

The horn stops creeping further into him. When Karkat lifts his head, the adult looks almost bored, and he feels a new pang of fear despite the fact he's hardly been in charge of this portion of her morning's _entertainment_.

The adult lets go of the horn, and some of the pressure releases. It's still way too far inside, Karkat wants it gone, he wants to be done, but he doesn't dare try to push it out. The adult pokes a fingernail at the stretched ring of his asshole, surprising him, and his ass reflexively clenches tighter around the bone. The shudder travels all the way up his body, but at least she looks interested again.

"What do you think that'd _feel_ like," she says.

Karkat would be perfectly willing to tell her that it feels _fucking terrible_ , but of course she doesn't give a shit about Karkat's opinion. She's looking over him to the other adult.

"I couldn't cram my horns up there, but yours aren't that twisted." There's a silence, and Karkat doesn't know how the man reacted, but when she continues talking she's grinning again. "C'mon over here, Dien, give it a try. Trust me, you haven't _lived_ 'til you've had some poor asshole clamped to the side of your head." She laughs at her own pun. No one else is going to.

Karkat feels like every point in his body is being crushed together. He's going to be the first troll case of spontaneous implosion. Because. It's not... The man's horns are more than twice as long as Ladeci's were, and they end in pointed hooks. If one of them stabs up through his intestines, it's not coming back out without half of Karkat's internal organs. Just. No. He can't.

The woman starts pulling the horn from his ass, much faster than comfortable. Especially when Karkat's suddenly changed his mind. He wants _that one_ to stay in.

Karkat feels the deep growl to the man's voice before he makes out the words. "That's the most repugnant suggestion I've ever heard," he says, and Karkat sucks in a desperate gulp of air. He didn't even know he'd been holding his breath. His body relaxes fractionally, shaking after that moment of helpless, frozen panic.

The adult yanks the horn free with a squelching plop. Karkat's asshole is sore and it's the first time he's been aware of it's emptiness, and his thighs and lowest back are slick and sticky. His insides are aching and he feels scratched up, but if there was any bleeding, it's lost in the black engine grease.

The top two thirds of the horn have been mostly wiped back to orange, but the couple inches above the base are still covered in thick blackness. Inside him, the horn had seemed impossibly long and thick, and it's hard to believe she only crammed in a few inches before losing interest. And this was Ladeci's narrow horn. Karkat doesn't know what he'd have done if the horn with the bulb near the tip had been the intact one.

Except he does know, doesn't he? He'd have lain there and fucking _taken it_.

The woman briefly examines the piece of bone she's holding, then shrugs and lets it clatter to the cave floor. She wipes off her palm against Karkat's hip and, when no more black slime seems to be transferring to his skin, she scrubs her hand a few times on her own pants. 

"You know, he's probably telling the truth," she says, conversationally to Karkat but loud enough for her partner to hear. Karkat's still shaking, adjusting to the idea that he's _not_ about to be skewered to death, but he moves his eyes in unsteady jerks until they meet hers. In case this is one of those times she wants proof he's paying attention to her. As if he has a choice to stop. As if his life isn't at the mercy of her every fleeting whim.

"Blue bloods," she explains. She expels a short, dismissive hiss of air, like she's actually a gossipy lowblood, not a high green. "Maybe that's really the worst thing he's ever heard."

Her tongue darts momentarily between her lips, touching each of her longest fangs before disappearing back into her mouth. Her stare shifts to an undefined point in the distance, and she grins at the scene playing on the inside wall of her head. "I still haven't figured it out. Is he actually that sheltered, or is it just a lack of imagination."


	5. Chapter 5

The adult looks over her shoulder across the cave, presumably at one of the scattered machines of indeterminate purpose. Then she takes out her small computational device and looks at that, before packing it back into her captchalogue deck.

"We've still got some time," the adult says. Then she looks at _Karkat._ It's all too exaggerated for her not to be doing it for effect, but does she really think it's possible for Karkat to feel any worse right now?

The adult doesn't say anything for a second, just keeps looking at him. And, yes, Karkat thinks, as anticipation grows heavy and solid in the center of his chest. Yes, it turns out it _is_ possible.

She pokes him in the chest, and Karkat flinches as though she punched him. Which must be the response she wanted, because she pokes him again, this time in the darkest bruise under his shoulder. At this point, it doesn't hurt more than the rest of him.

When she does it a third time, her finger jabbing suddenly into his upper abdomen, Karkat barely grits his teeth in reaction. He stares up at her in bleary resignation, helpless to do anything but wait for it to happen again.

Instead the adult reaches down and closes a fist tight around one of his horns.

Karkat's eyes clench shut as though he'd glanced outside during the day. It feels like it. His mind is too full of unexpected sensory data, and it's too intense to _mean_ anything. Pressure and smell and vibration rush together until he's dizzy. He twists and arcs over the stone, trying to pull away, but every time he does there's a new burst of sensation. With his eyes closed, he can't tell if he's floating or plummeting. From far away, his trapped arm throbs. He's smashing it between his body and the stone.

He needs to stop thrashing right the fuck now. Karkat rips his eyes open and finds a spot on the top of the cave to stare at, ignoring the way the rest of the world lurches around him each time he yanks against the grip on his horn.

Except, wait, no, he's not. He's managed to get himself still. The adult is pulling on him. Up. She is fucking pulling him up by his horn like it is a handle on an overnight journey packing sack.

His throat tightens. He's going to growl at her, Karkat realizes in a moment of perfect but abstract clarity. It's like he's detached from the process, watching from somewhere just beyond the overwhelming sensory information. Of course he's going to growl at her. That's what anyone would do, although they'd do it while kicking away the grabby offender. Karkat probably shouldn't, though.

He'd clamp a hand into his neck to shut himself up, but now that he _needs_ his arms, he can't get them free. The loops wrapped around and around his wrists tighten when he fights them, and he can't focus enough to untangle the imaginary rope.

Karkat's teeth are bared as his lip lifts into a snarl, and he thinks _shut up shut up shut the fuck up you fucking useless nooksniffing moron_ , and pressure builds in his throat anyway. He's going to threaten her, it's a thing that's going to happen, and he can't stop it any more than yelling at the memory of himself will stop him from going cave exploring like a lost braindead wiggler.

Except that just as his lips widen to let out the sound, the adult clenches her claws into his horn, yanking hard, and the sensory overload flares into pain. The nascent growl turns into a _scream_.

When she loosens her grip again, Karkat pants for air. His vision slowly comes back into focus. He untenses in the relative comfort, and he can't tell if it's exhaustion or giving up. And he's _grateful_ again. It's worrying, Karkat knows he should be worried, but there's already too much to be frightened about. He doesn't have the energy. He couldn't stop himself from growling at her, but _she did_ , and it takes effort not believe that she saved him. Even though she is the thing Karkat needs saving from.

The adult is still pulling up on Karkat's horn. "Work with me, here," she says, and there's an unimpressed edge to her voice. Karkat's already wincing, but his face twists even further at how stupid he is. He hadn't guessed she had a goal beyond making him miserable.

She yanks up a few quick times. Pointedly. Karkat fights through the surge in dizziness and tries to get into a sitting position. His feet can't find purchase anywhere, so he pushes with his elbows. One of his arms hurts a lot when he does, and filtered through the blaring nonsense from his horn it's like his whole body is in agony. Fuck. Maybe it is. He can't _think_.

He needs to move upwards. It's taking too long to get his wrists out from the mess of invisible rope, but he still has some inches of movement with the hand he's not laying on. He presses his palm against the stone and _pushes_.

And his balance is so messed up right now, what he accomplishes is pushing himself off the top of the boulder. His eyes finally confirm his horn's confused announcements that he's sliding, falling, tumbling forever into the abyss, and his limbs feel like they're flying in seventeen different directions at once. He couldn't stop himself if his arms were free.

But he doesn't have to. When he actually tips over the side of the boulder, the adult's arms grab around his torso. She's suddenly almost clutching him against her chest, and whatever other horrible things she's done to him today, this is the largest amount of _contact_ they've had.

His feet flop uselessly to the floor, and Karkat wishes she had let him follow them. Her encircling arms feel like a _trap_ , and he has to force himself not to thrash in panic. He's acutely aware of the smooth texture of her jacket on his skin. The raised, curved lines of her green sign press into his shoulder.

The horn she was holding is muted in his brain, leaving the other one unbalanced, but without someone pulling them in the wrong directions his dizzy confusion starts to fade. And his other senses settle back to normal, now that there's no overload in his head. The cave appears mercifully darker. Phantom, out-of-place smells waft away. If only he could turn down his _tactile_ senses...

God, he can't handle being this close to her. He's going to lose his mind entirely. He's going to bite her. He's going to start screaming and not stop until she snaps _his_ neck.

The adult lifts Karkat onto the boulder again. She arranges him so that he's sitting, with his shoulders leaning on the cave wall and his lower legs hanging down the side. His hands rest on the stone surface behind his back. Enough loops have unwound from his wrists that he could slip the invisible rope, but he's doesn't know if he should anymore.

Sitting upright is putting too much pressure on his ass, and it throbs as a reminder of the adult's last choice of fun. In case the black stains on the side of the boulder weren't enough.

Karkat shifts very slightly, so that most of his weight lands on his hip. The change in position pulls at his chest and shoulder, but "less uncomfortable" is all he can hope for.

More than he can hope for. The adult is getting closer to him, and Karkat doesn't know if she's moving too fast or too fucking slow. At least she looks _pleased_ again, although Karkat wishes to fuck he would never get to find out why. He watches, limp and unresisting, as she leans her leg on the stone beside his knee, and reaches towards him, and touches his horn again.

It's the same horn as before, and Karkat tenses. His fists grab desperately at the psychic rope. But this time the adult isn't pulling, she's just lightly resting her thumb on the curved top. Even though he hasn't completely recovered, this isn't overwhelming. Almost the opposite. The weight of it sits in his awareness like a welcoming shadow.

The adult starts to move her thumb down his horn in a loose spiral, and that shadow expands and unfolds pleasantly over his thoughts, enveloping them, slowing some of his panic.

Karkat hates it. He hates it and he hates her and he hates his stupid nubby vulnerable traitor horns. His breath hitches, and part of that is the texture of her skin sliding over bone, and part of that is how he needs to roll his eyes towards the ceiling until he suppresses the warning burn of tears.

When the adult's thumb is partway down his horn, she raises her free hand to Karkat's opposite one. Starting from its tip, she matches the speed and direction of her other thumb. It's the same movement exactly, except on different levels of each horn.

His brain decides this means his body is _tilting_ over, extremely slowly. Karkat stares above the adult's shoulder at a steady point on the far wall of the cave. The illusion fades in and out, but it doesn't go away. It feels like the cave floor starts sliding with him, and then they both snap into place, over and over. Each time he blinks he loses his sense of place completely. His arms jerk reflexively in their invisible bonds, as though to catch his weight.

Karkat fights the sense of disorientation, but it's still nothing compared to when the adult was pulling roughly on his horn. The main part of his dizziness now is _because_ he's pitting one sense against another, a deathmatch of vision vs kinesthetic vibration. Beyond that, Karkat's body mostly feels light, like he's floating in supor slime.

The adult reaches the base of Karkat's first horn. She slides her thumb around the seam between bone and scalp, and she keeps increasing the pressure. It's not unpleasant. Karkat almost wishes it _was_ unpleasant, but he's not such a frond yanking idiot he can't see how that might possibly, conceivably be a thought he'd find himself regretting pretty fucking immediately.

The shadow of sensation balloons further in his mind. There's not enough room for the rest of his thoughts, and edges of his other senses narrow and start to turn fuzzy. He shakes his head, but that just moves his horns faster and harder against her hands.

Her second thumb finds the bottom of its horn, and Karkat makes a high pitched noise in the back of his throat. It's distress. It has to be distress, because otherwise... he doesn't even fucking know.

"You're so sensitive," the adult says. She squeezes the base of both horns at the same time, and Karkat doesn't whine again but he gasps hard, lips and teeth open into the air. "Even with these stubby pieces of shit."

Karkat cringes. _Fuck her_ , his horns are fine, he wants her away from them, he doesn't care... but even now he can't _stop_ the welling of embarrassment. Shame for his defective mutant body. The hot niggling fear that he's not _good enough_. And more shame at that, knowing who he's trying to impress.

The adult's looking at him like he's a mildly amusing _joke_. "I hope you appreciate that," she says. "It fades when you get older." Her mouth quirks suddenly, like she finally got to the mildly amusing punchline. She corrects herself. " _If_ you get older."

Karkat doesn't know if his shudder is from her words or the pressure of her fingers. She holds it a few more moments, increasing her grip slowly, until his thoughts are bleeding into each other and his senses of sight and smell begin to blur. Then she lets go. Karkat feels like he's suddenly crashing down, hugely heavy and no more stable.

She returns one thumb to the top of his first horn, and she lets it sit there while she brings her other hand down. Too far down. It jumps back into Karkat's awareness when it lands on his lower abdomen and slides onto the membranes of his exposed seedflap.

Karkat's eyes widen, despite the reflected daylight. He jerks backwards as much as he can. Which is approximately half an inch, just far enough to slam the back of his head into the cave wall. The adult is starting to get that hungry, too familiar look, and Karkat can't figure out why he's even surprised. Of course this is what's going to happen next. What the fuck was he expecting.

His thighs are inching closer together, resisting on their own since the rest of him is useless maggotshit. The adult moves her leg away from the boulder and slips it between his knees. Then she shuffles her leg back to the original spot she was leaning against, but this time his thighs are wrenched open as she goes. The airflow moves, cool, around his crotch and outlines where black grease is stuck to him.

The top of the boulder scratches under Karkat's skin as the adult pushes, widening the angle of his hip. As if she needs to. As if she doesn't already have easy groping access to his genitals. As if tips of her claws aren't, right now, running lightly over his seedflap.

But the roughness of stone is the only sensation that doesn't make Karkat want to be sick. He tries to focus on it, but there's so much competing for his attention. The smooth, unyielding pillar of the adult's leg pressing against his own, or the itching lines she's tracing along his sensitive membranes, or the gentle, distracting weight of her thumb on his horn.

And the rest of him is still a jumbled assortment of the different ways he can hurt. Throbbing bruises, strained muscles, sharp burning lines in places that aren't meant to be scratched... even where she's not touching him now, his body can't forget that she _has_.

The adult twists her hand around on his crotch, so that the heel of her palm rests on his bulge and her fingers slide up over his flap. And then she grinds _down_ and, slowly, pulls her hand halfway into a fist around his flesh.

Karkat's back arcs into the rush of what is, and he can't pretend, of what is intense, spongefreezing _pleasure_. His hips leave the boulder for a moment, putting his weight on his fists and his shoulders against the wall, and there's a moan ready to escape his throat. Karkat doesn't let it, clamping his mouth shut, claiming this small victory. He couldn't handle the _admission_.

But her eyes narrow as she stares at him. Smugness. She doesn't need it.

She loosens her grip, equally slowly, and Karkat settles back again. His breathing is rough and he's still twitching, writhing under her hand. He tells himself he must be trying, even if uselessly, to get further _away_.

The adult starts squeezing again, but this time she wraps her other hand fully around Karkat's horn. She moves both sets of fingers together, and when the pleasure builds again, this time it gets tangled with the vibrations from his horn and seems to spread into his body. The throbbing of his injuries is overwritten with the throbbing in his bulge, and it should be _relief_ as much as anything, except that there's no relief at all. The pain might be blanked out, but it's quickly replaced by disgust.

Karkat's disgusted by how weak and helpless he is, by how _easy_ it is for him not to resist. By how fucking amazing it feels with every pull of her fingers, because anything else is a lie, and the need growing in him second by second for _more_. If she stopped now, it would be its own sort of torture, even if it's one he'd take over her continuing.

It's not like Karkat's never stuck his own hands down his pants. Over the past few perigees, his bone bulge has become thicker and more sensitive, while the membranes of his seedflap have grown longer and begun to fold in on themselves. He's not done with puberty yet, but he's groped around the changing parts of his body, rubbing and squeezing in contented exploration.

But what the adult is doing to him is nothing like his own inexpert attempts at masturbation. She's moving with a faster rhythm now. Her palm grinds hard against his bulge, and her fingers reach farther up his flap with each stroke. And worst part is that it's _good_ , it's better every time. His hips buck without his permission, and while they don't match the speed of her stroking, Karkat thinks they might have if he knew _how_. Below his range of vision, the coolness of air runs between his twitching toes.

She knows how to play his body better than _he_ does. And of course she does, that shouldn't be any fucking surprise, she's had access to a body for a lot longer than Karkat has. But he feels more pathetic anyway. The unbearable ecstasy bounces directly from his crotch to the horn she's holding, like she's strung one of her psychic threads through his torso and head. Fuck, can she do that?

Tension is starting to build in his groin. It's a heavy, pleasant tension, though one that promises it'll be even better when it's ready to release. And then Karkat remembers with gruesome clarity how the male adult had shuddered around Karkat's face, Karkat's nose pressed to the man's stinking bulge, and how the man's telling blue fluid had dripped from his nook onto Karkat's face.

It had been the worst thing that ever happened to him.

Karkat will have have to laugh at how ignorant he was. Sometime. Maybe after the worst things that ever happened to him stop fucking happening.

The adult moves her wrist in an semi-circle. Her fingers press along Karkat's seedflap, and the tightness in his groin stretches into his abdomen like an elastic band. It's hard to think. His brain is full, between the echoes of her hand rubbing up his bulge and the vibrations in his horn that have him half convinced he's floating away.

But he's finally realizing how this is going to end. The adult hasn't felt a need to break his skin. Yet. He's been _lucky_. And it doesn't matter at all, because when she's done with this...

Karkat doesn't even know why she's doing it. _She's_ not getting any pleasure out of it. And she's staring at Karkat with that weird, intent hunger, and her fang is playing with the edge of her grin, and all of it makes no fucking sense...

...when she's done, there's going to be a puddle of mutant red staining the rock beneath him. Karkat won't have anything left to hide.

For a moment, fear burns away the _need_ growing through Karkat's body with every press of the adult's hands. His senses clear, and everything is _too_ in focus. The sharp twist of the adult's smile, the smell of her breath rushing, faster now, over her lips. The angle of his knee, hooked around her black clad leg. Daylight traces harsh lines over everything in the tunnel, and it's like he's never seen so clearly, and all he can see is that there's no way he can escape being exposed.

And then the adult squeezes him again, horn and bulge, and fear and pleasure spin together until Karkat can't tell the difference. He shuffles backwards on his hips, squashing his hands against the stone wall, but the adult just leans after him. She doesn't even drop her rhythm.

The adult runs her thumb in circles at the top of his horn, not quite in time with the way she's been tightening her fingers around it. Karkat knows he's solidly planted on a piece of rock, but he _feels_ like everything is spinning away. It might have been pleasant, but he's too ungrounded already, too desperate. The tension in Karkat's groin is becoming an insistent pressure, and he's not going to be able to hold it off. He has to. He _can't_.

He can't tell her to stop, but maybe if he begged, maybe if he offered... What? Anything. He'll do anything she wants him to. But she already has him on that.

The adult bends further over him, giving her more weight to press into his crotch. Her claws scratch harder at his seedflap, and Karkat jerks at their sharpness against his membranes.

"Look at you," she says. "You're terrified. Don't you know this is the fun part?"

Her nostrils are flared, but just the stench of his fear must not be enough for her, because she leans in even closer and fucking presses her tongue to his face. She licks a stripe from his jaw to the inside of his eye, and then pulls away, bringing her tongue back into her grinning lips. The line of her saliva burns cold on Karkat's skin. 

She rubs the heel of her hand faster over Karkat's bulge, and he still manages to keep silent, but his hands clench and unclench on the psychic rope looped around his wrists.

"What, am I hurting you?" Her fingers move on his horn, and the tension in his abdomen pulses again through his body, bringing him closer each time to losing the last of his control. Karkat shuts his eyes, remembers better, and looks up into her face as he shakes his head, rolling his skull on the rock behind him, pulling his own horn through her grip.

"Didn't think so," she says, sliding her hand down far enough it hits his nook before she grinds up again. "How about now?" And this time, instead of squeezing gently at his horn, she pulls back her nails and digs them in.

Karkat screams. It's too intense, too much for him to process without warning. But by the time he drags in a second breath the stabbing pain is already fading. The adult is running her fingers in small circles where her claws had bit in, as though to smooth the sting away. Light throbs and dims in his vision, and Karkat's muscles twitch as he struggles to stop gasping.

Then the adult starts rubbing his bulge again, and Karkat's gasping for a different reason. "See?" she says. "This could be going worse for you." Her hand tightens on his horn, and Karkat tenses, but she's just falling back into her old rhythm. "Though you do scream pretty nicely. I definitely want to hear that again."

And Karkat would gladly scream for her right now, he's been constantly on the verge of screaming since she caught him. But he knows that it doesn't count for her unless he can't stop himself. Unless he _means_ it.

The pressure in Karkat's groin is starting to ache with the need for release. The pain of it is nothing compared to the vibration of the adult's skin on his still tender horn, but the desperate tension builds along the lines of his body into something he can't sustain. He tries clenching his abdomen to hold it back, but that just makes the tightness around his muscles even more urgent.

Karkat's shifting on the boulder, arcing his chest and jerking his hips, strange abortive movements that don't mean anything. He's still gasping, and the trail end of each breath is a low sound, halfway into a sob. He's going to give in. He's not strong enough to hold on, even when his life depends on it. So maybe he _deserves_ to be culled.

"Huh," the adult says. "Are you actually fighting this?" She would sound incredulous if she was less amused.

Karkat can't focus, but he does his best to aim his gaze up at her. He struggles to say, "No," and his voice cracks even on the single word.

The adult laughs at him. "Kid, thought I already broke this to you. You're as shit awful at lying as delaying the inevitable."

And then the adult clamps her fingers along the folds of his seedflap, grinds her palm against his bulge, and _twists_...

And the no longer anything like pleasant tension flares through his mind as powerfully as her claws in his horn. There's no room left for pain or fear or panic, and that blankness would be the greatest relief he's known even if it didn't carry its own sharp ecstasy. But barely an instant later it drains from his body, muscle after muscle, leaving him limp. Karkat would slide down the cave wall if the adult wasn't still pinning him in place by his horn.

Her eyes and fangs gleam in the reflected light. She stares down at him, considering, and Karkat knows that it's over.


	6. Chapter 6

The adult makes an amused humming noise. She takes her hand off Karkat's bulge and angles it further down between his legs. Karkat feels the press of one fingertip against the opening of his nook. He flinches away, slamming his hands harder into the wall, but it doesn't change anything. He's still naked, and exposed, and finished.

She lifts her finger up and holds it in front of Karkat's face. It's a blurry gray meat tube in his vision. She's mocking him, she's obviously mocking him, she hasn't ever stopped. But it doesn't fit. He's betrayed himself, she knows he's a mutant. She's not mocking him _enough_.

Karkat forces the world back into focus. The gray smear becomes a thick, jointed line, topped with a short nail filed to a point. But it's dry, there's no telling red stain. He doesn't understand.

"Five sweeps, right?" the adult says, randomly. Karkat's not sure if she's expecting him to respond, but she just snorts and drops her hand, wiping it casually on her pants. "I know you're new at this, so here's a hint. You're supposed to provide your own lubrication."

So that's it. There isn't any vivid red fluid dripping from his nook. She caught him too young.

Karkat almost wants to laugh. It's close. His shoulders shake, although most of that is muscle tension. The movement rubs his horn distractingly through her hand. He takes a deep, glorious breath to celebrate that he still has a _chance_.

"That's okay," the adult says. "I don't mind improvising." She brings her hand back down and rolls it in the crease of his leg, where engine grease is still collected. It smears wetly at the beginning of his inner thigh.

She lifts her hand away, so Karkat can see that her first two fingers are coated lightly in black gunk. As if he was a black blooded troll, which would leave him equally cull-worthy. He doesn't know what her point is. Is she going to make him eat it? Fucking fine with him. Better than the rest of the shit they've stuck in his mouth.

But she doesn't. The adult drops her hand to his crotch again and pokes her finger to his nook. Then she pushes _through_.

Karkat cries out in shock. It doesn't hurt, she barely has the tip of her finger inside the orifice, but he's never had _anything_ there. Of course he hasn't, he's not a pervert with a death fetish. He is obscenely aware of the sharp end of her fingernail sliding inside his nook, and she's pushing it _deeper_ , and even after everything else Karkat can't believe this is actually happening to him.

He tries to squirm away, twisting from side to side in case somewhere there's an escape, fighting to yank his arms from behind him, but the adult tightens her grip on his horn until every movement leaves him whimpering in distress. He stares pleadingly at her, and she just widens her grin at his desperation. Her finger twitches further in.

"Oh god," Karkat says. "Oh god please I'll do anything please don--"

And the adult yanks her hand from his nook for the purpose of slamming her elbow into his chest. The air is forced from his breathing organ. He's dizzy, and it's not just his abused horn. He wants to crumple in on himself but he can't. He can't breathe. If this is what dying feels like no wonder he's been fighting to put it off.

The adult waits until Karkat has more or less gasped his way to a recovery. Her expression has flattened, although there's still amusement in the crease of her eyes.

"You wouldn't like what I'd have done if you finished that," she says. Karkat tries to focus on sucking air without wanting to collapse. And she's right, he's such an _idiot_. He keeps handing her excuses to make things worse.

"Understand?" she says, and there's an edge to her voice that means she wants an answer.

She's gripping his horn too tightly for him to nod, so Karkat says, "Yes." It's barely a whisper. It's the best he can do.

"Good." She runs her thumb along the base of his horn, and some of the pain in his chest floats away. "That's what you want, yeah? To be good for me?"

_Fuck you._ Fuck you fuck you fuck you. But what Karkat says is, "Yes."

"Bullshit you do," the adult says, and her grin slides right back into place. "But it doesn't matter what you want, 'cause you will be." She pokes him in the chest with a back stained finger. "Won't you?"

Karkat pulls his hands tighter against his back. It doesn't do anything except make his arms flare in pain, but somehow that helps. It's a pain under his own control. He keeps looking into the adult's gaze, because that's what she always wants him to do. That's what she's _trained_ him to do. "Yes."

The adult says, "Remember that one. _Yes._ It's so much better for you than _no_."

She puts her finger back on his chest and runs it quickly downward, over his abdomen and through the folds of his seedflap and onto his bone bulge, which is so sensitive right now that Karkat sucks air through his teeth when she pokes him with a claw.

And then she's back at his nook, pushing into him with a filthy, grease stained finger. Karkat clenches his jaw so he doesn't make the same mistake, but every time he breathes out, it's a whine.

Karkat hates her. He hates her more than he's ever hated anything in his life. It's like he didn't even know what hate _was_ until now, because he finally truly hates something, and it's her.

But it's _wrong_. He doesn't want her to keep touching him, he wants her to stop. He wants to hurt her, but he doesn't want to see emerald green blood pooling in the gashes he's clawed across her shoulders, he wants her _gutted_. He wants her head rolling on the floor.

He just wants her to stop.

She doesn't stop. She's not going to stop. The adult wiggles her finger slowly into his nook, more slowly than she probably fucking has to, and Karkat squirms and kicks his free leg on the stone, but he doesn't fight. And it's sick that it's starting to feel good as she slides inside him. It's little like when she was pushing on his bone bulge, but more direct, not spread through his whole groin.

There's the feeling of being stretched open, but it's so different from when she was ravaging his asshole. Her finger is a lot smaller than a horn, and his nook is meant to be penetrated. Eventually. Not like this.

"What are you doing?!" It's the male adult. He's yelling. He's a lot closer, too, than Karkat realized, having gotten off his bench and stopped a few feet from his partner's shoulder. His hands are clenched into fists at his sides.

The woman makes a show of rolling her eyes as she turns her head towards him. And fuck, she looks even more smug. She jerks her finger up, and Karkat yelps.

"Now I really don't get how you survived this long," she says. "Should I label you a diagram, Dien? Borrow you a copy of Where Do Grubs Come From?"

It looks like the man's trembling, but _Karkat's_ trembling, and between that and the pressure of the woman's hand on his horn he can't be sure. Besides, he doesn't care.

"This is contemptible," the man says, and the rumbling undertone of his voice is halfway to a growl.

"Yeah?" The woman bends her finger inside Karkat, enough to make him gasp, but she doesn't look away from the other adult. Karkat's glad to have a break from the center of her attention, but having her hungry, vicious smile aimed at someone else is just a reminder that whatever's happening, it's never been _about_ him. There's nothing he can do that will actually matter.

"Why's that? You think this kid's got a matesprit somewhere, depending on him? Or a kismesis swinging a half-full bucket around? You'll have to explain to me what your fucking problem is, Dien." Her grin deepens, like she's _daring_ him.

The man snarls. "I will not be a party to this depravity," he says.

She laughs. "That's a happy coincidence, 'cause I don't remember handing you an invitation."

The two adults stare at each other for several seconds. The man's snarl sets into an unhappy line, and the woman's self-satisfied expression falls to something more serious. "Or what," she says. "Are you going to stop me?"

Now the man does growl. He spins on his heel and stomps to the other side of the cave, where he glares over from the the opposite wall. The woman shrugs, but when she looks back at Karkat there's a frustration in her eyes. Karkat suddenly understands everything. It's so _stupid_.

She glances over Karkat. "So where were we?" she says, and pondering that question seems to cheer her up again. Karkat's fulfilling his purpose as entertainment, at least.

He braces himself for her finger worming its way inside him, but what she does next is tighten her grip on his horn, through disorientation and discomfort and right into throbbing pain, and pull it down.

Karkat follows it without thinking. His brain is filled with the stabbing intensity, but his body begins to topple sideways to where she's leading him. But this isn't what she must have wanted, because she drags him back up again.

Once he's upright, Karkat shudders with the relative comfort of not having his horn jerked around, even if the adult's still gripping it too hard. But that doesn't last long.

The adult slides the heel of her hand until it's leveraged solidly against Karkat's head, jammed into the sensitive flesh just below the base of his horn. Then she regrips with her fingers and pulls down towards her palm. It's the familiar dizzy pain of having his horn yanked in the wrong direction, but she's pressing back against his skull so Karkat can't move to alleviate it. This time, the adult really _doesn't_ have a purpose beyond seeing him suffer. Big fucking change.

The adult has about half her finger jammed up Karkat's nook, and now she pushes in until her knuckles are resting against his skin. She does it quickly enough to shock him, and his hips twist in response, a feeble attempt to dislodge her. The movement knocks her fingernail around the inside walls of his nook. It's a sharp sensation, one he's exceedingly aware of even over the noise from his horn.

He wishes the rasp of her claw didn't feel _good_. Good and close to... something.

The adult shifts position, using Karkat's horn to steady herself and filling his vision with new pulsing stars. Her nails catch on it, and the vibration travels through his bones. She knocks Karkat's knee wider and he barely notices. Then she rotates the finger inside him until she finds an angle where she can drive it in further. Her knuckle digs into the opening of his nook.

Karkat's hips leave the boulder, but that's no escape. The adult gets her hand directly underneath him, making gravity an accessory to this travesty. He slides down as she works upward, bending and stretching her finger inside him. Her fingernail scrapes higher and higher, and Karkat's own fingers scrabble on the wall behind him.

Until the adult must have reached the top of his nook, because the point of her finger is suddenly the only thing that _matters_. And it's not like Karkat wasn't expecting this, hadn't resigned himself to it, but he hates himself that the whine escaping his mouth is only _half_ horror.

The muscles above his groin shift and tense, but they stop mid-spasm. It's uncomfortable, but seconds pass and nothing else happens. And Karkat's lower torso, that traitor, is yearning for _more_ , urging him to increase the pressure.

Karkat's pretty sure he knows what happened. The adult is bigger than him, but her fingers are still way shorter than an Imperial Drone's spines are supposed to be, and that's what belongs up there. She can't reach quite far enough to finish this. Karkat's shaking from being trapped on the edge for one endless moment after another, but anything is better than the alternative.

The adult seems to reach the same conclusion, because she growls softly in frustration. Then she tightens her hand around Karkat's horn, tight enough that the intensity burns away some of the feel of her _other_ hand, and uses it to push him down.

There is no down. His ass is on the stone or on her hand and there's no more down to go. But she doesn't stop pulling at his horn, harder and harder, and her finger scratches all the way into his nook, and Karkat can't take it. He screams. It's like she's trying to _twist_ his horn off at the base, and Karkat screams wordless nonsense, and if she decides to shut him up by doing it permanently he doesn't even care anymore.

Karkat had thought bleeding out with a horn up his ass was the universe's most embarrassing death on offer, but that was only because he never imagined that even such a huge psycho bitch would try to steal his genetic material out of season, without even a bucket. Even though it probably _wouldn't_ kill him, whatever it feels like right now. It'll still be sweeps before the Drones come looking, after all, as if he could ever risk them finding him.

If they were both mature trolls, at least he'd have the right of vengeance before being culled himself for failure to perform. But he's not. She can do anything she wants to him, even this, and no one will care.

The adult pulls up a little, only to try to _slam_ him down. Her finger bounces inside him, but it doesn't go any further. The adult lets out a noise herself, Karkat notices over his own misery, and what's available of his attention snaps to her without waiting for the rest of his brain to catch up. Apparently he's developed a new survival reflex. Rip his hands out of fire, flinch away from the sun, and make sure this asshole stays happy.

It takes him a few moments to process it over the sensory overload from his horn, but the noise was a sharp groan, pushed out through sharper teeth. It's probably because she's mashing her hand between his body and the boulder. Because she is stupid.

She flexes her fingers under Karkat, and her nails dig into the skin behind his nook. One of them pokes the ring of his ass, which takes the chance to remind him that, yes, everything still aches where she forced him open. In case he was worried that had stopped just because he was distracted by any fresh new torture or anything.

The adult has stopped trying to push him down by his horn. She's frowning, which frightens Karkat into near lucidity. It's so hard to focus between the leftover vibration in his horn and the torment of her fingertip _almost_ far enough in his nook. He manages to narrow his eyes to her face and ignore the fuzzy ghost images drifting over his vision.

The adult's definitely frowning. But it doesn't seem like she's displeased, and she's looking at Karkat's general area more than him personally. It's like she's trying to sort out a challenging logistics problem in her head.

Karkat wishes he had less faith she'll get it. She managed the horn in ass problem, didn't she, and...

Fuck. Fuck, no, she wouldn't. She _couldn't_. There's no way Ladeci's horn is going up his nook. It wouldn't _fit_...

The adult doesn't notice Karkat stiffening with terror, but then it's really not much of a change. She must be bored with problem solving, though, because she shifts her grip on his horn, convincing his brain that the cave is rotating under him far too fast to be plausible, and starts pulling again. At an angle this time, not down. She makes sure to counter the pressure by pushing the heel of her hand against his skull, so he can't fall over even though he'd like to. Sitting is too much for him. He gives up. He can't do this anymore. He doesn't have a choice.

She's yanking even harder than before, and Karkat screams again. It's the only option he has. He catches the glint of the adult's satisfied smile, and he knows it should make him want to shut up to spite her, instead of feeling some slight relief that he's doing the _right_ thing. It doesn't even matter. He doesn't have the energy to stop.

The worst part, the very, truly worst part is what a hollow sponged idiot she is. And Karkat is just as bad, because he's the one who'd blundered directly into her clutches like he woke up one night and thought it would be neat to pick himself a bouquet of oversized, flesh dissolving snapplants. Now he's trapped in the middle of her inept, bullshit drama. They'd cull the writer of this screenplay as a blight on the genepool, because no one would believe any character could live this long while being such an astounding grubfucking moron.

The adult leans back. The pull on Karkat's horn abruptly lessens, although the intruder in his nook doesn't go anywhere. Without other senses screaming at him, the insistent clench of his abdomen floods over his mind. Karkat tries to focus around it, blinking at the adult until he can make out the considering frown back on her face.

It's different, though. This time she _is_ looking directly at Karkat, and her expression holds no patience of one about to tackle a fascinating puzzle. If there's something confusing her, she looks more likely to grab one of her knives and stab it until it stops.

"You going to explain that," the adult says. But Karkat's still fighting to regain his bearings. He doesn't know what she means.

The adult pushes his head back, knocking it against the cave wall. The impact shoots around his skull, but it's barely more than his current level of pain. "That wasn't a fucking question," she says. Karkat's trying to figure out what to say, but when he doesn't respond immediately, the adult's lip raises over her fangs. "I didn't doubt you had some choice names for me rattling around in there," she pushes Karkat's head into the rock again, for illustration, "but moron. Really?"

Oh shit. Oh _fuck_. Karkat had been shouting thoughtlessly while she twisted and pulled at his horn, but apparently thoughtlessly hadn't meant _wordlessly_ after all. And he'd shared at least some part of his rant on her intelligence with the worst imaginable audience. Karkat stares at her in silent terror.

"You going to give me your reasoning now, kid? Or are you just waiting for me to ask more creatively?"

There's a deep chuckle from behind her. "Perhaps the child has simply noticed your speech patterns, Zhaleya," says the man. "They're hardly indicative of a deep and wide-ranging intellect." The female adult looks at him with as honest a snarl as Karkat's seen from her.

"Yeah, and you can go lick out the mothergrub's secondary asshole, Dien. I wasn't talking to you." When she turns back to Karkat, the anger is still there. "But you, kid. You know I'm not going to keep waiting on your answer."

Karkat gives her the best one he can think of. "I'm sorry," he promises desperately, voice cracking. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it."

"'course you did." The adult's eyes wander down to her hand under Karkat's nook. In his terror, he'd actually almost managed to forget about her finger digging inside him.

Now she pulls the finger out, quickly enough that it exits with a sticky _pop_. His empty nook feels raw and too wide, and Karkat's body untenses fractionally. Part of him is frustrated at being held so close to release, only to be denied, but seriously _fuck_ that part.

"So you're going to tell me why. Unless curiosity is insufficiently moronic for you?"

"I'm sorry," Karkat repeats, still lost for anything else. "I'm really--"

And this time the adult jams two fingers through the entrance of Karkat's nook. He shouts and shifts back on his thighs and shoulders, lifting himself off the boulder, but the adult grabs onto his horn again and forces him back down.

Her fingers slide deeper, claws drawing two sharp lines inside him, and they're so thick together. The stretching of his nook is unbearable. They don't _fit_. Even with the black grease, he doesn't know how she's not tearing his nook apart. Not that the adult would care if she did.

She flexes her fingertips, stretching him even more, and Karkat digs his nails into the psychic rope holding his arms safely away. Not like it's stopped him from finding all new ways to doom himself. "Please," he whimpers. "I'm sorry."

"Sure you are," the adult says. "But I didn't tell you to be sorry, I told you to explain what's going on under this pathetic orange nub." She's still holding onto Karkat's horn, and now she starts yanking it down at an angle again. And it flares painfully, but at least the adult's grinning again, amused at Karkat's distress. Karkat's in more pain than when she was angry, but he feels paradoxically _safer_ like this. Like he's proving that he's useful to her, even if the only thing she wants from him is his agony.

And then she jerks her fingers another half inch into his nook, and all he can think about is the abrupt stretching where no one should ever, ever be allowed to touch him. It hurts, but the disgust is no less overwhelming the second time. "Well?" the adult says.

And Karkat says, "Fine! Fine." The adult doesn't let up, her fingers still moving deeper into his nook, still tightening over his horn, but Karkat continues anyway, careful to aim his words directly into her face. "Fine. Yes, you're an idiot. You're making this huge performance out of flirting, because that's why I'm still fucking breathing, isn't it?" The adult yanks suddenly on Karkat's horn, and he chokes, but that is _cheating_. "But you don't even know if you want him black or pale. You can't tell if you're hoping to offend his fragile blue blood sensibilities, or get him to _stop you_."

She glances over her shoulder at the other adult, and when she looks back, her grin is fading. It should probably be Karkat's cue to shut up. He doesn't shut up. He knows that as soon as he closes his mouth, he's going to be left facing the enormity of what he just did. "How can you mix that up. What kind of spongerotted grubsauce reject doesn't know the difference between a moirail and a fucking... and a fucking kismesis."

Karkat has to stop talking so he can hiss through his teeth. The adult has kept working her fingers into him, and now she's nearing the top of his nook. Those unfamiliar muscles in his abdomen clench again, stronger and more insistent than the last time.

The adult is staring down like she just saw a lusus win a game of three consecutive symbols in a nine square grid, and is wondering what its brain would taste like. "You really are pretty smart, aren't you?"

Karkat laughs, once, although it trails into a whimper when she increases the angle on his horn. "If I'm so smart," he says, and it comes out like a plea, "why am I still fucking talking."

And the adult brightens, delighted with the question. "That's an easy one," she says, fangs bright over her smile. "It's because I told you to. And 'cause I still haven't ripped out your tongue and swallowed it."

Karkat clenches his teeth together with a loud click, hard enough that his bottom fangs poke at the upper line of his gums. His tongue retreats into the back of his throat. As if it would find any safety there. When the adult wiggles her fingers inside him, prompting Karkat to whine, his tongue is so far back that he chokes around it.

"Hey," the adult says. "Don't look so worried about it." And that's bullshit. She wants Karkat to be worried. To be terrified. Even now, she's leaning slowly towards him, her nostrils wide to better appreciate the scent of his fear.

"You've done a good job so far, showing me why I should leave that tongue exactly where it is," she says. Karkat shudders, his memory offering a quick replay of everything they forced into his mouth. He can still taste it. He can still feel the texture against his lips. He wants to be sick, and the dizziness from his horn isn't helping. "We've still got loads of time together, so just keep it up. I know you can manage that."

The adult is smirking at him, close enough he can feel her breath sliding over his face. Her hands are both _occupied_ , and for a horrible moment Karkat is sure she's going to close the last few inches and kiss him, to prove how easily she could make him open his mouth.

But instead she straightens slightly, and her attention moves to the horn she's been pulling on. She gives it another yank, so strong and sudden that Karkat's head wobbles despite the heel of her hand pushing back. The world is washed out for a moment in bright confusion, and no, it's not hard at all to make Karkat open his mouth. You only need to give him a reason to scream.

The overwhelming sensation fades more quickly than before. Karkat's brain must be getting better at filtering it out. When things come back into focus, the adult has stopped twisting and pulling his horn at weird angles. She seems to be readjusting her grip on it, and her fingers slide lightly around the circumference, tightening gently and letting go.

The pain is already fading to an echo, and the constant dizziness has become that earlier sense of floating. It could be _pleasant_ , even, if Karkat doesn't fight it. But he will. He has to. The vibrations also amplify the feeling of the adult's fingers in his nook, tying his whole body to a single point of disgusting, shameful _need_.

And she's so close now. Her fingers have slid in further while Karkat was distracted by his horn, and the tips of her nails ghost over the end of his nook when she moves. The too-wide sides of her fingers press into the trails she's scraped on her way up. Karkat hates his body for reacting to the sharpness. Apparently the point of her claw is close enough to the point of a Drone's spine, so nothing else _matters_.

His abdomen is tightening over and over in rhythmless spasms, and it's starting to feel uncomfortable on top of _wrong_. Whatever muscles these are, they're getting tired. They aren't any more prepared for this than the rest of him.

The adult jerks her hand up another few millimeters, and one of her nails scratches at the top of his nook. Karkat's whole body arcs, into or away from her reaching fingers, he can't even tell. His head bangs against the wall behind him and his arms jerk in their psychic loops, and he draws in his legs.

The adult surprises him by letting it happen. One of his legs is still tangled in hers, forced open, but when he brings his knee up, she slides her own leg out of the way. His feet scrape up over the boulder, and Karkat keeps them there until his body slowly untenses, from resignation and muscle exhaustion rather than because she released the pressure inside him.

But while the adult allowed him to bring his leg up, she doesn't let it back down. Her thighs and crotch are in the way of his knee, and Karkat's forced to keep supporting it awkwardly. It doesn't even do anything to block her access to his genitals, because she twists her hand and the pressure in his nook still increases. It's about as much as she'd managed with one finger, which makes no fucking sense. Wouldn't she get stuck earlier with two?

Karkat makes a noise that's way too much a moan for him to forgive himself and pushes against her with his raised knee. Which he regrets instantly, but the adult doesn't mind. At all. She's actually pushing back, grinding her crotch into his leg with short, circular motions that jam his foot into the rough stone and make his fatigued leg muscles complain.

There's no mystery to what she's doing. He can feel the swell of her bulge pressing through the fabric into his skin. She's rubbing herself off against his knee, like his entire body is nothing more than a cheap fuck board for her to test out and discard.

It is. That's exactly what he is to her, and the adult never pretended anything else. He's an object for her to amuse herself with, and he's helpless to do anything but let himself be _used_. She could break him in half, and it would matter shit all to her.

But her fingers are inside him right now, crawling up his nook. Her claws are sharp points of heat building through his body. It's the most debased, and the most intimate violation Karkat can imagine, and being reminded that it's still nothing personal leaves him feeling even more worthless, like he really is just a disposable piece of trash. The weight on his leg is barely a twinge compared to the other sensations fighting through his mind, but he cringes every time she thrusts.

At least it's only a couple of minutes before she stops rotating her hips, although she's still leaning so the shape of her bulge presses under Karkat's knee. It doesn't seem like she's finished, and Karkat doubts she'd been grinding hard enough to actually get off. His utter misery must have been just so compelling she couldn't go without touching herself.

She's welcome to her take her hands back for that. Any fucking time.

The adult is looking at his fondled horn with an anticipatory smile that Karkat's sure would terrify him if he had any more terror to call on. Her fingers have stopped moving over the horn's surface, and now she's gripping the bone in a fist. Most of the confusing vibrations fade once her hand is still, although Karkat doesn't yet feel stable on the stone.

The position she settled on is strange. Under the hand around his horn, the adult's wrist is bent so that the side of her forearm runs over the ridge of Karkat's eye, and her elbow juts out in front of his vision. It has to make another sharp bend to join her shoulder.

Karkat doesn't understand why she would ever choose such an awkward way to hold her arm, and now he's feeling a surge of fear, because he's learned that the things he doesn't understand always turn out worse than anything should possibly be.

"You might want to brace yourself," the adult says. As if Karkat has any way to do that. Except maybe jam his leg harder into her crotch, but she'd probably take that as encouragement. The adult's lips quirk, amused, as she continues, "but I doubt it'd make any difference."

And she's right, because the next thing Karkat's aware of is _pain_.

It's blinding, white fire along Karkat's every nerve, every cell. The world is swallowed into it. The adult is pulling on his horn again, but this makes her previous yanking seem like a pleasant, feathery touch. The complicated twisting of her arm is letting her angle his horn down while keeping his head more or less in place, and it's letting her use all the weight and leverage she has.

His senses are overwhelmed to uselessness, bleeding so much information there's nothing but _white_. He might as well be floating in the sun. Karkat would tear out his eyes if it'd stop, but the whiteness doesn't exist anywhere but his brain. He's too hot and too cold and his pain receptors sting and throb and burn and everything he's ever smelled is flooding him.

Karkat smells an echo of his lusus and cries out to it, but it doesn't work. He's already screaming. He just can't hear it over the noise in his head.

Karkat doesn't know how long it lasts. His sense of time has been wiped out along with everything else, the only way for his brain to make enough room for the agony. But eventually the adult releases his horn.

She does it too suddenly for him to compensate, and the empty outlines of her claws digging into his horn burn cold. Everything lurches in the opposite direction, but the intensity ravaging his nerves doesn't fade quickly.

The first sense that returns to Karkat is kinesthetic vibration, and the awareness that his body actually exists, although the information it reports is nonsense. It's like he's spinning imposssibly fast around an ever changing axis, falling both up and down through a bright, noisy eternity. There's nothing to grab hold of. He can't even think, but that's an improvement, because this is the first time he _can_ think enough to notice.

Then some of the vibrations echo through his ears and become voices, unsteady and modulating, and overlaid by clicks and humming that only he can hear. The adult trolls. They're arguing.

"not going to put up with the noise!"

"Whatever, Dien. Is he the one yelling right now? No, I think that's actually you."

They're arguing about him. He should be paying attention. But it's hard. But there's nothing he can change anyway.

Everything slowly dims around him. Blurry splotches resolve into outlines of the cave and the adult troll in front of him, although the textures are shot through with unlikely bolts of neon. When the adult moves her head, Karkat is hit with the scent of ocean salt. His senses are a scrambled mess.

At least now that his vision is recovering, it's anchoring him in space. The feeling of spinning freefall lessens, and a lot of his confusion with it. Other sensory ghosts blink out one by one. The humming echoes in his hearing become muted, and the smells with no source vanish as if wafted away.

And some of those hurt to lose, despite how impossible it is to sort through so many at once. His brain had given him hallucinations of things that he knew, and crammed between memories of swamp decay and load gapers he's known were much more comforting smells. The chemical spray of a newly spawned movie container, or a recuperacoon with freshly changed supor slime, or the promise that his lusus is somewhere nearby.

Karkat whimpers when that last one disappears. Even if it was never true, he feels abandoned, left with nothing but dust and the stink of his captors and his own despair.

And with the female adult's fingers still up his nook, of course. Now that the input from his horn isn't so overwhelming, his body wants to focus on that instead. His abdomen is clenching and unclenching faster now. Karkat tries to hold it still, but it doesn't have any effect. It's like those muscles don't even belong to him anymore.

The adult waves her hand in front of Karkat's face. Karkat watches it blankly, and when she sees that his eyes are tracking, the adult pulls it away and grins at him. It's a wide grin, with more teeth than Karkat thought she had, although he might not be seeing correctly yet. Some of them undulate as he stares.

He thinks she's on the edge of laughter.

"Kid, you have no clue how lucky you are." Karkat just looks up at her. If there's a response to that, he doesn't know it. He's shaking. His body is throbbing, and his brain is throbbing, and an adult troll is so, so close to extracting his genetic material, and no one's going to stop her, and he barely even cares any more that it's going to betray him as a mutant. He was an idiot for ever thinking he was going to survive this.

The adult's watching his expression, and now she does laugh. "No, really!" she says. "You won the jackpot when they handed you these undeveloped nubs."

She reaches out and runs one thumb over the round top of Karkat's horn, and Karkat doesn't even have the energy to flinch away. But it actually helps, strangely, as the concrete weight of her hand settles some of the imaginary vibrations. The world becomes clearer around him, and his heels relax slightly from their grip on the stone. As though that would have kept him stabilized. At some point while he was distracted and yelling, she'd let his other leg go.

The adult's smile is just a few degrees away from _friendly_ , but the edges are too sharp and her eyes have a predatory gleam. "See..." And her claws lurch up inside his nook, and his abdomen tightens so suddenly Karkat's breath is forced from his lips. "I thought it'd be fun to snap it off."

The adult's eyes flick across the tunnel, to where Ladeci had spent his last few terrible moments, and her smile deepens in happy memory. Karkat's sure he has the same scene playing across his think pan. Ladeci had been a twisted, broken _thing_ when the adult was done with him, screeching like nothing Karkat ever heard from a troll, mindless with agony he was never going to get a chance to recover from. He hadn't even reacted when the adult finally went to kill him. And maybe Ladeci _was_ aware of what was happening, he was just desperate for it to be over.

The adult had been disappointed to end it so quickly. Lucky for her she had a spare, because now she has another chance to get what she wants. Which is to turn Karkat into _that_.

And he agreed to cooperate, didn't he? To let her break him? Like she wasn't going to do it either way.

The adult takes her hand away from his horn. She shrugs. "But yours are so small, I couldn't get the leverage right. Might have been able to tear the whole thing out of your skull, but there's already going to be a mess without bits of brain sponge everywhere."

Her tone is so companionable as she tells Karkat the details of her attempt to maim him horribly, and he can't handle listening to it. But there's nowhere for him to escape to, nowhere for him to even look without seeing the adult's smug grin. Karkat would close his eyes, but she's talking to him. He doesn't know if he's _allowed_.

The adult grabs Karkat's hip where it meets his inner thigh, holding it steady as she pushes her other hand into him. It shouldn't work. If one finger failed, two shouldn't get any further. Yet when she pushes up, with a grunt and a twist of her shoulder, something in the angle lets her first knuckle enter his nook. The thickness makes it feel like she's burning him, rather than stretching him too far open, but with the extra inch she can finally drive one claw into the end of his nook with the force his body has been yearning for.

Karkat bites back his despairing "No!" There's a moment where he's still, as the pressure of her claw seems to build and spread itself inside him, and then it crests and his muscles start spasming again. Their movements are stronger and have a new rhythm.

It's nothing like after she manipulated his bulge. Karkat has no control at all over the reacting muscles, and there's no ecstasy in this release. If anything, it hurts, although Karkat's felt so much pain recently it barely matters.

It's probably muscle fatigue. His abdomen is clenching over and over, rippling from the front and the sides, but nothing else seems to be happening. There's no bucket's worth of mutant red exploding from his crotch, even when the adult spreads her claws inside him, making him whine from the mix of pain and sharp edged pleasure.

She hadn't gotten any fluid from his nook, so maybe Karkat hasn't matured enough for this part either. His muscles are squeezing, but maybe there's no genetic material for them to force out. Maybe that's why it hurts.

But then Karkat feels a wetness under his seedflap. It spreads up through the folds, catching the coolness of the cave air on his membranes, and drips down over his bulge. The adult's grin brightens when she notices. She lets go of Karkat's hip and cups her hand under his bulge to collect it, though she keeps working her other hand inside him.

Karkat doesn't know why she's not reacting to the bright red, but his capacity to give a fuck is draining out of him with his genetic material. Karkat shuts his eyes and leans his head against the stone behind him. His shoulders pull awkwardly in their bonds, and he fights for a few seconds with the psychic rope before giving up.

She's left him emptied. Ruined. Worthless to anyone when the Drones come, and the fact that he would have been worthless anyway is no comfort. He knew this was coming. He should have fought her. She'd have done it anyway, but at least Karkat wouldn't despise himself for relaxing back and letting her.

The adult wiggles her fingers out of Karkat's nook. The places where her claws scratched into him still throb with pleasure, but everything else is stretched and aching. She runs her fingers through the membranes of Karkat's seedflap, collecting the last bit of his material into her cupped hand.

She snorts at the result. "Didn't exactly need a bucket with you, did we?"

Karkat reluctantly rolls his eyes open. The adult has a handful of liquid. Some of it drips over the side of her palm or between her fingers, but she's right, it would barely coat the bottom of a collection pail. And it's mostly clear, with some clots of white, pink, and engine grease black suspended inside it. Not much genetic material at all. It smells of mucus more than musk or pheromones.

He was right after all. He's too young to be destroyed like this.

The adult rubs apart one of the thicker white clumps with her thumb. She looks slightly disappointed as she watches it dissolve, but this time Karkat's unwilling to take it personally. Especially since she gets over it a moment later.

She lifts her gaze sharply to his and grins. "Thirsty, kid?" Karkat's tongue seizes up and his insides twist, mostly reminding him how unhappy his abdomen muscles are right now. Of course that shit is going down his throat. At least it's _his_ disgusting sex fluids this time.

Karkat doesn't answer fast enough for her, and her eyes narrow slightly. "Yeah," she says. "I don't actually care. How it works is you open your mouth or I unhinge your jaw."

Karkat opens his mouth. He tries to hold it wide enough to give her easy access. The faster she pours it in, the faster he can swallow it away, right?

But as she raises her cupped palm towards him, the adult's grin starts to fade, like she's puzzled or slightly annoyed. After holding her hand at Karkat's chest level for a few seconds, she changes her mind and dumps it to the side, shaking the fluid over the boulder and Karkat's thigh.

She wipes the remainder off on Karkat's shoulder, and then she raises her fingernail to Karkat's face. The adult scratches lightly at the skin beside his nose and along his cheekbone, and he's very careful not to move when she gets near the corner of his eye.

"Hey, Dien," she says. And Karkat notices that the male adult is much closer now, drawn in despite his protestations of disgust. "You ever see tears this color?"


	7. Chapter 7

It's like Karkat's entire blood pushing system has been replaced by freezing water. Karkat doesn't know when he started crying. He doesn't know which part _broke him_ , but now that the adult's pointed it out, he can feel the dampness on his cheeks.

"No," he says, barely a whisper. It's a child's fervent plea, spoken as if denying the state of the universe would be enough make it come untrue. If only Karkat had been able to hold together for a few more minutes... but no, he was too weak. Weaker than he'd ever imagined. Whatever comes next, he deserves it for giving in. "No no no no."

And he should be punished for his words, even though he doesn't mean to refuse her anything, but the adult isn't listening to him. She doesn't even wait for her partner's response before moving. She seems more focused than Karkat's used to and, for once, uninterested in playing _games_.

The adult drops her hand from Karkat's face to his neck and grips into it. Her fingers wrap under the line of his jaw and her claws dig into the skin under his ears. She lifts him a few inches against the stone wall, far enough to stretch his body taut but not to actually unseat him from the boulder. Karkat jerks, more in surprise than struggle, and the adult presses her forearm into his shoulder to keep him steady.

With her other hand, she takes out her glittering obsidian knife and swings her arm in a smooth, efficient gesture.

The edge of the knife is so sharp that the next thing Karkat feels is the warmth of liquid spilling down his torso, and it takes long moments for the sting of parted flesh to catch up. Karkat can't see it from where the adult has clamped his head to the wall, but she's sliced a line across the width of his chest. What little strength he has left in his body evaporates, leaving him hanging limply from the adult's hand. It's hard to breathe around the pressure on his jaw, but Karkat doesn't care. He's sure it won't be a problem for much longer.

The adult lets go of Karkat and straightens. The knife goes back into her specibus. Despite the small distance, Karkat drops awkwardly, scraping his elbows and banging the back of his head. He could look down at his newest injury now, but he doesn't. He knows what he'll see. Vivid red staining the outside of his skin, marking him, exposing him as _wrong_ to any assholes who want to come and stare. Just the _knowing_ makes him sick.

Karkat wants to wrap his arms in front of him as cover, but he'd have to untangle them first. And that urge is exactly _why_ she let him have the psychic rope. Karkat's not the one who gets to decide when he's done being on display.

Both adults had watched the first spill of his blood with bemusement, but they're getting over it fast. The man's lips are returning to their sneer, and the woman...

She's been looking down at Karkat with a flat expression that he can't read, but it lifts between seconds. Her eyes shine again with amusement, and she laughs at a joke only she can see. "He did say his blood was red," she says, snickering, to her partner. The dismayed line of the man's mouth twists to anger.

The woman turns back to Karkat. "Wow," she says. "Kid, I didn't give you nearly enough credit for your bluffing skills." She traces a finger under the cut on Karkat's chest, and it comes away dripping with his mutant blood. And it's ridiculous, but apparently Karkat had some remnant of hope to be destroyed, like as long as he hadn't seen it the possibility remained that something else was leaking from him. Blue, or yellow, or fucking carbonated grubsauce juice.

The adult turns her wrist, admiring the shine of reflected light on vivid red. Then she raises her hand and licks the blood off. To her side, the man makes a repulsed choking noise, which she ignores.

She makes a brief show of thoughtful consideration, before tightening her nostrils and scraping her tongue off on her fangs. "We definitely picked the right one," she says, and what she means is that Karkat would have tasted gross if they'd tried to eat him. And it should be a relief that at least he's not going to end up as midday snack, but somehow it isn't. It's just further evidence of exactly how disgusting he is.

The man has finished rebuilding his scowl. His hands are in fists, clenched tight to his sides, and there's a focused rasp to his breathing. He's livid, and he's barely keeping himself in check. Karkat imagines he can see the blood pulsing blue under the bones of the man's throat.

When the female adult glances at him, her grin spreads wide over her face.

He's been staring at Karkat, but now he turns on his partner. " _You knew?_ " His words are half-growled, and it sounds like an accusation rather than a question.

The woman sighs heavily through her teeth and rolls her eyes. "C'mon, Dien, think. How the fuck would I know about this. Not that I'm shocked by your absolute faith in my many, many talents..." But he's turned away from her to glare at Karkat again.

Karkat wilts even further against the rock. Their revulsion is nothing more than he expected, but the man is violently angry and focused in Karkat's direction. His hands make the occasional twitch, like it's an continuous effort to stop himself from ripping Karkat apart. Karkat doesn't know why he's bothering.

The woman is considering her partner with her own brand of hungry intentness, one fang toying with the edge of her lip. "Yeah," she says, softly. Her voice rumbles deep in her throat. "He's not even on the hemospectrum, is he? A rogueblood. Freak." The man doesn't say anything, but now his shoulders are actually shaking in rage.

"Disgusting piece of mutant filth." It feels like the adult's sunk her knife into Karkat again, all the way through bone, and _twisted_ , but she doesn't care. She's only watching for the man's reaction. "And you had his mouth dripping all over your horn, Dien," she says in the same low tone. "Drooling deep into the cracks." The man makes a high pitched, aborted growl, and Karkat flinches.

"Where else did he put that freak tongue? Did you get him to wipe your flap for you? Stretch it up your nook?" The man shudders, distracted momentarily by an idea even more repugnant than Karkat himself. But Karkat would have done it. If they'd told him to. Of course he would have. "Tell me something, Dien. Did it feel as good as I told you it would?"

The man spins on his heel, tearing his violent glare away from Karkat and aiming it at his partner. He opens his mouth in a snarl, and Karkat thinks he's going to yell at her, but then he catches himself. The man breathes out in a noisy hiss and goes very still.

Moments pass while the adults stare each other down, their expressions and body language frozen, communicating who the fuck knows what between them. Karkat finds himself holding his own breath, like time has stopped for him too until they deign to unpause it.

It's the female adult who breaks off first, turning away with a short, dismissive shrug. But she seems vaguely disappointed for a second, until her gaze lands on Karkat and the corners of her lips twitch back up.

Her eyes widen in sympathy. Mock sympathy, unconvincing sympathy, but Karkat can't help trying to hold on to it. He stares pleadingly up at her. He's so desperately grateful to exist for her again, and that she can still look at him without being overcome by disgust or rage. It's the only protection he has anymore, the only reason he's still alive at all. The adult runs her fingers gently into Karkat's hairline, displacing tiny flakes of dried green and blue which catch in his eyelashes, and Karkat leans into her hand instead of flinching away.

"Don't know what to tell you, kid," she says. "Doesn't look like he's very happy with you right now." She nods her head at the male adult, now glaring again at Karkat specifically, in case Karkat should be confused about who she's talking about. "If I was someone who gave a shit about that, I might think about apologizing."

"I'm sorry," Karkat says, and the adult's eyes fill with amusement, wiping out the fake concern. "I'm sorry," he repeats, more urgently, needing to bring it back.

The adult just seems more smug. "Not to me." She's petting Karkat again, her fingers moving in slow lines against Karkat's scalp. He can still feel her touch burning in his mind, but this time because he's actively focusing on it. It's the only connection he has left. "Believe it or not, I'm not the one who wants to crack out your leg bone and skin you alive with it."

Karkat knows how pathetic he is right now, naked and helpless, with his hands wrapped inside her own projected rope and a vivid red slash across his chest more honest than his sign ever was. There's no pity in the adult's eyes, but her lips twitch in amusement as she stares down at him.

The adult is still happy with him, and it doesn't even matter that what she's really happy with is Karkat's pain and despair. At the prospect of causing more. It feels like safety, like the closest thing to safety he's ever going to feel again, like the world will still exist five minutes from now and maybe, maybe he'll be around to see it.

Karkat knows what she wants from him, but it's almost impossibly hard to look away from her. He has to, though. He needs to _keep_ her happy with him.

Karkat turns his head to the blue blooded soldier. It's physically painful, as if the movement squeezed every organ in his torso. His breathing is shallow. The man is quiet, but his mouth is frozen into a sneer. He's glaring like Karkat's continued existence is an affront to his personal dignity.

"Well?" the woman says.

Karkat's breathing organ locks completely. He mouths the words emptily several times before he manages to force himself to look at the man and say it. "I'm sorry," Karkat says, and his voice breaks on every syllable. The man's sneer widens in further anger, but it doesn't matter, Karkat's done. He looks back at the woman.

She's smiling now, and Karkat relaxes a tiny amount, even though it's a smile sharp with anticipation. "Nice try," she says. She's still running her fingers through Karkat's hair, and she pauses to tap a fingernail against his skull. "So you're sorry, huh? What are you sorry _for_?"

Karkat doesn't understand the question. The words float on the surface of his brain, refusing to acquire meaning.

The adult tightens her grip in his hair and yanks his head up and back against the stone, forcing him to look directly into her gaze. But he was doing that _already_. "I mean, are you apologizing for being such a repulsive freak-blooded aberration? A pathetic mutant runt? Is that what's happening here?"

She hasn't stopped smiling, but she might as well be kicking him in the chest. Karkat wants to drop his eyes, but he can't. She's holding his head in position. He wouldn't anyway. "Yes," Karkat whispers. " _Yes_."

Her eyes glint with satisfaction, and Karkat feels a strange lightness at getting it _right_. But then she bends closer to him and shakes her head. " _I_ don't need to hear it." She releases her hand, and Karkat's head drops, heavy without her support.

He looks back at the man, who seems even more hostile. "I'm sorry," Karkat says again, and it's no easier. "I'm sorry for..." What did the woman say? He can't remember. Fifteen seconds ago is impossibly distant. "I'm... I'm the most disgusting mutant nubslurper who ever hatched from the Mother Grub's oozing diarrhea soup." He's choking the words out, but finding them is easy. They run along familiar grooves in his brain. "I should have been culled before I crawled out of my pupation cocoon. I'm a shitstain on the surface of a hoofbeast's tumorous asshole and... I screwed everything up. This is my fault. It's all my fucking fault."

Karkat runs out of words, exhausted. The man is still obviously furious, but when Karkat tries to avert his gaze, the woman pushes Karkat's head back with her palm. It's a gray wall beside his eye, preventing her from entering even his side vision. The loss twists in his chest. "Yeah?" she says. "And what else?"

"I..." Karkat trails off. He doesn't know what the adult wants from him.

She drums her fingertips against Karkat's head, just below the root of his horn. It echoes loudly through his skull. "What did you _do_ ," she says.

The man reacts to that, releasing a quiet growl before silencing himself. It's extremely low, felt more as a tremor in the air than an actual sound. Karkat tries to turn his face into the female adult's palm, the closest thing to _hiding_ he has as an option, but she just rotates her hand, aiming his gaze back at her partner.

When Karkat is still silent, _hesitating_ , she tightens her fingers against his head. It's a warning. Her claws dig into the skin around his horn, and Karkat gasps, but he breathes out into words.

"I'm sorry that I..." And there's a hiss underneath Karkat's voice, like it burns on his tongue. "That I _touched you_."

The woman loosens her grip on Karkat's head. She moves her fingers in slow, encouraging circles where her nails had been, and that close to his horn, the movement is a soft weight in Karkat's mind. It might have been comforting, but the man is actually growling at him now, a deep warning rumble, and every instinct Karkat has is screaming at him to abscond. He sinks further against the boulder.

The woman leans down towards Karkat and says, close enough that her breath touches his ear, "You can be more specific than that."

Every word Karkat stuttered out has only seemed to push the man closer to losing control and ripping out Karkat's throat, just as originally promised. He can't do this anymore. But when his silence grows into seconds, the woman starts to tighten her fingers again. " _How_ did you touch him," she says. She flicks a claw into Karkat's horn when Karkat answers with only a whine.

"With my _mouth_ ," Karkat forces out, and the blue blooded man's eyes widen further in rage. But the woman doesn't stop squeezing her nails into Karkat's scalp. She wants him to keep going, and Karkat knows that the only choice he has right now is giving her what she wants. "I put my filthy mutant mouth on your horn... oh god... on your skin...."

The man is still growling at him, but it's no longer a low frequency warning. He's not demanding Karkat get out of his presence, he's declaring his intent to strike.

The female adult says, "You forgot something," in a friendly, lyrical tone.

And Karkat finishes with, "I'm sorry." His voice shudders and breaks, and he tastes salt and pigment at the corner of his lips. He's crying again, painting even more bright lines over his skin. No wonder the man is so revolted by him.

The woman slides her hand back along Karkat's cheek, so that it's no longer blocking his view. His breath is still unsteady, and it catches again at the sight of her, at the evidence there's someone, anyone, who still wants him alive.

She makes a show of slowly glancing to her partner, and then she looks at Karkat with an expression of overdone sympathy. Karkat knows it's false, taunting. He _does_. But everything she made him do seems worth it, just to have that soft smile aimed in his direction.

"Well, okay, you tried," she says. "But it doesn't look like it helped much. Maybe you're just crap at apologies, kid." She turns back to the man. "So what do you think, Dien? Want to punish him?"

Karkat closes his eyes and moans a soft, "No."

The woman takes her hand off Karkat's cheek and slaps him hard across the face. His head slams into the cave wall, one of his horns bouncing against the rock, and his horn and cheek sting in harmony with the slash on his chest, with the stretched contours of his nook, with so much of his body. The adult's nails come away tipped with unnatural red.

Karkat whimpers. "I'm sorry," he says. "Sorry. _Please._ " But he doesn't dare beg _for_ anything.

"Mmm, I bet you are." The woman reaches between his horns and playfully ruffles his hair. Karkat shudders, but it's in relief. That she's still willing to touch him feels like absolution. Cave dust scatters around his face, sticking to his tears.

When the woman takes her hand away, Karkat bunches his own into fists. But his fingers are weak, and they tangle in the loops of psychic rope.

"See?" she says to her partner. "How else is he going to learn to be better?"

The blue blooded adult takes a deep, forceful breath and lets it out with steady intentness, but as calming measures go, it's a failure. He does stop growling, but his tension merely flows into his shoulders and hips. His stance grows as limber as a sheet metal sculpture of a brick.

He twists towards the woman like his joints are run on notched gear circles. "Not all of us require playthings to keep ourselves entertained." Each word is bitten off with carefully enunciated scorn.

The woman scoffs. "Dien, you just gave me a summary of like, twenty of your most debilitating personality faults." And the man's fists clench so hard at his sides, Karkat can see bones shifting under the flesh of his hands.

With the adults solely focused on each other, Karkat's back to being a nonentity, with no action possible except sitting quietly until they acknowledge him again. Allow him to exist. Continue tormenting him. He doesn't understand why that's not worse than the waiting, however terrified he is right now. There must be something seriously screwed up about his think pan, because the last thing Karkat should want is their attention.

"C'mon, I know you want to," the woman says to the other soldier. "You stink of excess rage and... wanting to."

"It wouldn't be my place," says the man, and his voice has lost some of its crisp edge, vibrating too much in his throat. Whatever amount of control he'd gathered is evaporating again. At least the woman has drawn his murderous scowl away from Karkat. It's hard not to be so, so thankful for that.

"What, you think I never got schoolfed in how to share my ' _playthings_ '?" And then she takes a large step backwards, away from Karkat.

Without her next to him, Karkat feels acutely exposed. And _betrayed_ , which makes no fucking sense, but his chest seizes with it. He stares desperately after her and grips onto her psychic rope, as though that would keep her anchored to him, but if the woman notices either, she gives no hint. She's somehow managing to keep him the subject of conversation while ignoring him entirely.

The woman keeps her eyes on her partner. Her lips are thin around her open fanged grin. "Live a little," she says, and her voice once again vibrates low and hungry. She points an open hand towards Karkat, as though presenting him as a prize. An offering for their adult bonding exercises. "Don't know about you, Dien, but I've never seen such an uppity rogueblood wiggler. Why not show him exactly what he deserves?"

Karkat has to press his tongue against the back of his mouth to keep himself quiet. Say no, he wills the man. Say no, Say no, say no, _refuse_ , don't _touch_ me, I'm not _yours_.

For a few moments the man doesn't move. Maybe he can't. He's so tense with barely suppressed rage, maybe his muscles are locked and his limbs are frozen.

But then the woman laughs at him, a single, mocking "Heh," and the man snarls noisily and spins away from her. He closes the distance to Karkat in two fast strides and grabs him by the sides of his chest, huge adult hands wrapping just below Karkat's shoulders and thick fingers digging into his skin. One thumb is less than an inch above the slice across his chest, and the wound flares with new pain.

The man yanks Karkat off the boulder and Karkat doesn't scream, he's too despondent to scream anymore, but he makes a sobbing, high-pitched whine.

As frightening as it had been when the man was glaring before, now his face is inches away from Karkat's and it displays no less murderous intent. His eyes are wide and every line of his expression is twisted into rage. "Shut _up_ ," the man growls, with so much fury that droplets of saliva are spewed from his mouth. They splatter down onto Karkat's skin.

The man slams Karkat's upper body into the cave wall, and all the air in Karkat's chest is expelled at once, effectively silencing him. His head and heels lash backward after his shoulders, and his ass hammers his hands into the stone. The force from the hit echoes through his bones.

Karkat's dizzy and gasping, but he's also surprised to still be in one piece. The deep blue lines of the man's sign wobble in front of him, and on some level Karkat had expected him to be as freakishly strong as the only other asshole of Karkat's acquaintance with that exact shade. But he's not. Despite his choice of a heavy weaponkind abstratus, he might not even be stronger than the green blooded adult.

Karkat twists in the man's grasp. Karkat can't help it, he needs to find air but the man is holding him by the chest and _squeezing_ it.

The man takes offense, or he's still offended that Karkat exists at all. He snarls, a wet rumble of noise through his teeth. Then he pulls Karkat away from the cave wall and slams him into it again.

Karkat's head barely has time to bang into the stone, before he's being yanked away. Pounded back. His mouth opens to let out air he doesn't actually contain. His efforts at breathing are irrelevant. He might vomit, though.

It's as if the man is trying to ram through the wall using Karkat's body, but Karkat is going to break long before the stone does. He's smashed into it again, and now he's losing his bearings entirely. Maybe his horns aren't working any more after all the bullshit they've had to deal with.

When he's yanked back this time, Karkat sights a black and gray smear beyond the man's shoulder. It's the woman, and if he had any breath he would call out to her. Stupid. Pointless. Karkat has somehow acquired a visceral belief that she'd help him, if only he were allowed to ask, but that's _wrong_. His vision isn't resolving very well, but Karkat can make out the slash of white teeth in an open grin. Like she's laughing.

She _is_ laughing. That's the noise Karkat is hearing, under the growling of the male adult and the ringing in Karkat's head. She goaded her partner into beating Karkat to death, and now she's laughing like it's the greatest joke she ever pulled.

Her partner doesn't appreciate it either. This time after he bangs Karkat into the wall, the man keeps him dangling there. Karkat uses the pause to suck in a thin, shaky breath, but he doesn't have enough strength to fight for more. The air moves cold over his tongue, and Karkat tastes his own blood and fear. Some of his dizziness subsides, making room for the aching of his body in his attention.

The man looks over his shoulder. "What?" he demands.

"You, Dien. You're hilarious," the woman says. The man gives _her_ a warning growl, but it doesn't seem to bother her. "Not afraid to get your hands dirty if you're having fun, huh?"

He turns back to Karkat and stares down. He doesn't keep his nails pointed, unlike the woman, but even with blunted claws he's gripping Karkat so hard that his thumbs have torn through skin and flesh. Karkat thinks he can feel them rubbing against bone.

The man's angry snarl lifts higher, into disgust. He takes a step back and _throws_ Karkat to the floor. Karkat's shoulder and one horn clip the wall as he tumbles, and he lands, dazed, sprawled on his side at the man's feet. His arms are twisted awkwardly underneath him in loosened invisible bonds, but he can't summon the energy to pull them free.

The man is looking in dismay at his hands. All ten of his fingers are coated in dripping bright red, and yes, Karkat can feel the deep points of pain, four to a side, spreading down from just behind his armpits. One of the man's thumbs tore into the long cut in his chest. But Karkat doesn't care. The hurt of it is swallowed by the throbbing of new bruises, as his body's just waking up to whatever injuries he's taken from being pounded into the wall.

The woman snickers one last time. "Finished with him?" she says.

The male adult doesn't respond in words, but his scowl deepens across his face. He steps back with one foot, bringing himself into a more balanced stance, and reaches an arm beside him. He takes out a hammer from his strife specibus, the same wide headed instance he was using earlier to flatten metal machinery.

Shit. Shit. Shit. _Fuck_. Karkat had thought he'd never find the energy to move again, but now he's twisting on himself, heedless of the agony, and trying to scramble up. It's not working. He's too tangled in the psychic rope. His arms won't move out of his way and the dangling invisible length is wrapped around one of his legs. His knee can't unbend.

The woman's smug smile fades from her face. "Hey."

The male adult grips the hammer with both hands and hefts it backwards to build momentum. " _Hey!_ " the woman repeats, and this time her voice is tinged with her own warning growl. But he ignores her, bringing the hammer over his shoulder and into the downswing.

Karkat manages finally to yank one wrist out of the psychic rope, but it's too late to scurry away. He throws his arm in front of his face, and for an instant, the hammer blocks a shadow through the reflected sunlight.

And then—


	8. Chapter 8

It is dark. 

Dark is good, is comfort, is safety. In darkness Karkat's eyelids rest half raised, and he does not pull them fully open nor wince them against brilliant reflections and _something is wrong_.

There is gray flatness in front of him. It is far in front of him, too far to be reachable. Karkat doesn't reach for it. The gray is the gray of stone. Its texture is blurry through his lashes and familiar, just as a dream is familiar. Something within Karkat feels home in a way that has no words, that could never have words but _he is missing something_. It is like his pre-language memories, instead of being burned away by metamorphosis, had been rolled up and hidden in the safest part of Karkat's chest, buried deep under his bones.

Karkat watches the stone because the stone is what is in front of him. He does not lift his head or his eyelids, and the stone does not change. There are thin fissures running through the grayness, and Karkat finds abstract shapes in their lines. He dedicates them to people he associates with, or to their protectors, if he knows them. Or if they actually have one, but a ragged, three-edged polygon trails a pair of bent cracks beneath itself, and it's close enough to a pair of scales and Karkat needs to _wake the fuck up, right the fuck now_.

He's lying on the ground. Karkat starts to raise his head in confusion, but he immediately drops it with a silent, open mouthed gasp. The world is on fire. No. _He_ is on fire, and his body surges with intense, non-differentiated hurt.

It doesn't pass, it settles. Sharp pains scatter through his torso and limbs, leaving throbbing bruises to colonize the expanses between them. His nook and ass ache from the inside out. His head pounds. Lines sting over him with the promise of ripped skin, and the front of his chest is agony when he moves it to breathe. But he has to. His back won't expand at all, and when he tries to curl in his shoulders, his nerves flare with a cold, prickling burn, and underneath that is the terrible growing certainty that there's _something he doesn't understand_.

There's a noise. A chuckle, sonorous and round edged, resonant over stone walls, and every wiggler instinct Karkat has left screams for him to abscond, to hide, to be any fucking where else right now. He tenses, pain roaring through the whole of him, and it takes him second after second to realize why. _Adults _. He has to not be lying exposed. He has to not be here. He has to...__

_Yeah, it's way too late for that._

Knowledge slams into his think pan, far more mercilessly than that first awareness of pain. It's over. Ladeci is dead. Karkat is caught. By adults, who can do anything to him. There's nothing left to do to him.

_or is it just a lack of imagination._

Karkat turns his head towards the origin of the noise. He has to fight the stiffness in his neck and shoulders for every millimeter, probably alongside his reluctance to obtain visual evidence that the adults aren't simply day terrors he conjured for himself as a playful Fuck you, Karkat Vantas, sincerely, Karkat Vantas. PS, After smashing you in the face with it a few dozen times, I slammed the crowbar up your nook. Because I know that was exactly what you were hoping for, you deviant flatbulged nookreek.

The adults are on the other side of the tunnel and some distance down. The man is crouched over a lumpy blue device Karkat hasn't seen before, and the woman is leaning one arm against the wall. She's gesturing with her free hand, and whatever gossip she's sharing has the man pausing in his work to give another brief laugh. They're getting along again, easy once more in each other's company, as if all that posturing tension came with a switch labelled "Off."

Both adults have their backs facing Karkat, exactly how they never would if they considered him any sort of threat. Any sort of troll, instead of just a disposable thing to be used up and thrown away.

And that's it, Karkat realizes. That's the detail out of place. The thing that has been bugging him because it makes no fucking sense at all. They've taken everything from him, and his torso is slathered in peeling mutant red, and he remembers the woman mocking him while her partner smashed him apart. He remembers the huge mechanic's hammer coming down.

There's something about the state of the universe that is _wrong_ , and it's this. He's still alive.

Karkat stares silently at the adults for long moments, unwilling to risk their attention by even _blinking_ too loudly. But they continue to look only at the blue machine, entirely uninterested in Karkat's existence.

Maybe they don't know. Karkat feels about one kick in the face away from death, so maybe, since he's not worth _salvaging_ for _meat_ , they didn't bother to check for vital signs. After. Just dumped his body off to the side and forgot about him.

The thought churns up despair inside him, despite his understanding that it's the best case scenario. There's a part of him that wants to call out across the cave, let the adults know he's alive, have them verify it by reacting. That part is an _idiot_. If Karkat can remain still and quiet enough, still and quiet as a dead thing, maybe they'll continue not to notice him. And it's dark now. Nightfall. Maybe he'll have a chance to escape.

If he's capable of it.

Carefully, slowly, Karkat rolls his eyes down towards his body. His head pounds when he tries to focus, but he can see his legs, his abdomen, most of his chest, and his right arm. He panics for a second, and his chest heaves once with the effort of swallowing his gasp, before he realizes his other arm is just outside of his visual field.

Karkat glances quickly back to make sure the adults didn't notice anything. They're still facing away from him, unpaused in their work or conversation, but changing his focus so suddenly makes him dizzy and his headache worse.

A terrible thought occurs to him, far more chilling than when he'd misplaced his arm. Very, very slowly, with his eyes fixed across the tunnel in case the adults make any sign of moving, Karkat rotates his head until the top of the closest horn touches against the ground. The vibration echoes across his skull and through his opposite horn, which Karkat hopes to fuck means that one's still intact as well.

Of course, it wouldn't be any fucking fun to break them off while he was unconscious, would it?

No, not unconscious. _Dead_.

He has to get out of here.

Karkat looks down at his body again. His skin is more black than gray right now, and as well as the huge smear across his chest and the holes where the man's thumbs had dug in, there are bright red scratches all over him. Especially on his shoulder and hips, where he'd been tossed against rough stone.

The mutant vividness of his blood seems to stand out even more in the dark. In the daylight, it had stung his eyes, but then everything had been shiny and brilliant and painful to look at. Now that the light levels are back to normal, it's the only color that still makes him nauseous.

Beside his torso, most of his right forearm is a single bruise, darker than he'd known flesh could go. And it _hurts_. It's sharp and throbbing both at once, and in the middle of it is a wide dent.

The bone is cracked. It has to be. And it's not like Karkat made it to five sweeps without breaking anything, but he's only had hairline cracks and a few shallow contusion craters. Stuff hardly worth noticing. Not like his arm right now, where the dent is so large it looks like the bone is folding in on itself.

Karkat braces himself. He clenches his jaw shut, slowly so there's no audible click of teeth against teeth, and reminds himself to keep silent. Then he tries moving his fingers.

They twitch, fingernail orange flicking in his vision. Karkat focuses harder and this time the digits curl halfway forward towards his palm before he lets them go. His smallest finger resists the command, bending only slightly, but it had gotten the worst whenever his hands were being smashed between his body and stone. The finger is bruised and the skin on its outside edge is largely scraped away. It's probably screwed up regardless of what's happening above his wrist.

Karkat does it again, bringing his hand into something resembling a fist. Every time he moves, it feels like a dull knife is grating into his arm, but the inner muscles and tendons, the important ones, are working. It'll be weak, but he can still use the arm if he has to.

Karkat relaxes his fingers, and the sharpest edge of pain relaxes as well. It spreads from the crack through the rest of his arm, and it melts until it's barely notable among his other injuries. That's probably a bad sign.

Karkat moves his attention to the rest of his body, sighting down his torso to the faraway gleam of his toenails. His feet feel strange, as though further distant than the length of his legs, but at least they're not heavily bruised. He curls his toes, one foot after the other. They're stiff, but they respond to his commands.

At the movement, sharp twinges bounce up his legs and through his abdomen. They're amplified by the pressure of his horn resting against the ground, but Karkat just tries to ignore it. It's easier than lifting his head.

With the sharp spikes of pain and dark blotches of damaged flesh, Karkat wouldn't be surprised if his legs had cracks too, but nothing stands out like the damage on his arm. Of course, he didn't throw his _legs_ between the battering surface of an oversized hammer and his head. He's lucky that dent isn't between his horns. He is. And he'd trade an arm for working legs. Easily. One of these things won't help him run.

That's three limbs accounted for. Karkat still can't see his left arm without turning his head, but when he pulls in his fingers, he feels his nails catch on the ground. He stops before they make any betraying noise and rotates his hand over, putting skin instead of claws against the stone. Just in case he twitches without thinking and scratches out an alarm.

His arm isn't happy to be forced into movement, but it doesn't seem to be in anything near as bad shape as his right one. Experimentally, Karkat curls his wrist forward, and the pull of it stabs pain through his shoulder, his back... And then Karkat stops, and his entire body freezes. He's run his fingertips into something resting on his forearm. It's something round, and thin, and long, and he can't see it.

It's a rope.

Karkat's eyes widen, panicked, and his legs lurch into focus. But that view's useless. He forces his gaze slowly towards the adults, hesitating after every inch because he's not sure the scenarios twisting across his think pan could be any worse than reality. The rope is the female adult's projection, and she would have sensed the pressure. She must have felt Karkat move, she's going to straighten, she's going to turn around, she's going to _smile_...

Or no. She's not. Karkat's looking at her now, and she's still ignoring him completely. She's reading from her display device to the man, who's studying the surface of the lumpy machine. If either of them are aware of his continued existence, they don't find it worthy of reaction.

And now that the first numbing moment of panic is fading, Karkat notices that the rope lying on his arm is qualitatively different than the one that was wrapped around his hands earlier. It's wider, and even though it's fairly light, there's still an actual weight pressing down on his skin. It's probably a real rope, which means Karkat hasn't given himself away. Though fuck if he knows how he got tangled in this one.

He bends his wrist until his fingers touch the rope again. And yes, it's smooth, but there's still a texture there that the adult's projections never had. Karkat traces the line of the rope with his fingertips, ghosting them across his arm and the top of his chest, above the long slice in his skin, and over to where the rope changes direction, starts to wrap around his neck.

And now that Karkat's aware of it, he doesn't know why it took him so fucking long. His fingers tell him that there's slack between the rope and his skin, but his _throat_ tells him that it's cutting into him. He can barely breathe. He can't swallow, and suddenly he desperately needs to. His mouth is coated in thickened, stale blood. If he was with someone safe, he'd call out for water, but right now Karkat would rather die of dehydration. He remembers what was in the adult's hand when she offered him something to drink.

There are a few cuts healing inside his cheeks. Karkat reopens one with a chipped fang he doesn't remember breaking. His own blood pools slowly over his tongue, as gross as everyone agrees, but at least it tastes fresh. And it's liquid.

Karkat manages to swallow without choking, but the rope is too tight and too heavy. He slides his fingers around his neck, searching for the knot. There isn't one. He's enclosed in an unbroken loop, like it had been welded shut around him.

The adults still aren't turning from their work, so Karkat risks looking away from them. He rotates his head until he can see the other side of his body. The rope glows a very faint green, too dim to illuminate anything, and at this point it actually seems odd to be tied away by something visible. The rope has fallen into the crease of his elbow, and it meanders off under the closest giant machine. Which, as Karkat stares bleakly, resolves itself into the portable furnace.

If his back didn't flare with hurt when Karkat started to bend it, he'd have scurried away before remembering why that'd be a stupid, stupid thing to do. He pauses to slow his breathing. Calm himself down, because it's either that or screaming and there's no way the adults wouldn't notice _that_. Tears well in the corners of his eyes, and Karkat blinks them away without knowing why he's bothering.

He's not going anywhere. Not with his throat anchored to a hulking cube of metal, and the adults wouldn't have bothered doing that to a corpse. So they do know he's alive, they just don't currently give a fuck about it. They're saving him for later.

There's nothing left for Karkat to do except lie on the ground and hurt and wait until the adults get around to finishing him off.

And if he could believe that, Karkat thinks he'd actually be able to relax. Surrender to the inevitability of getting culled, which was always, always going to be his fate since the moment he heard the woman's multilayered voice. Longer. Since he skipped happily through the cave's stinking prolapsed asshole of an entrance. Since he first wriggled out as a brainless mutant larva.

But the male adult _had_ intended to kill him. Karkat's sure of that, and if the woman called her partner off it just means she isn't _done_ with Karkat after all. She must be having too much fun destroying him slowly, breaking him down piece by piece by piece. And who knows how long she'll be able to stretch that out, until there's finally nothing of him left worth tormenting. Hours? Weeks?

He can't. He has to get out, because.

He _can't_.

Karkat's hand tightens on the rope. It pulls at his neck, but he doesn't care. He's already having trouble finding oxygen. He digs his fingers into it, searching for the knot he missed the first time. There's still nothing. The rope splits into a "Y," the arms of which wrap around his neck until they meet in a perfect closed loop, too narrow to squeeze over his head without first cracking off half his skull. And Karkat had anything to work with he would _try it_.

The rope leads away in one solid piece. It stops at the furnace, and Karkat doubts it's attached in anything so kind as a hitch knot, but given the entire sprawling range of paradox space, it's dimly, hypothetically possible. There's no alternative hope.

Across the tunnel, the adults bend a panel back from the lumpy device. Where the surface is broken, it drips blue, and the man cauterizes a few of the larger bleeds before reaching into the gap. The woman holds it open for him, and neither of them care to so much as glance in Karkat's direction. Okay.

He presses his heels more solidly against the ground and lifts some of his weight with his elbows. Every joint in his body screams its unwillingness to be used as support, but Karkat focuses through. His jaw is clenched and the movement of air stings over his wide eyes and every muscle that still works is trembling, but he manages to shift himself a few inches closer to the furnace. And silently, with no scraping of stone. The adults didn't catch him.

Karkat returns his full weight to the cave floor in a controlled collapse and rewards himself with a few unsteady breaths. The new texture of rock against his upper back stings like a pattern of cold, twisting knives, but he's going to be in pain no matter what he does, and less while resting than otherwise.

The side of the furnace is still a couple feet away. Karkat steadies himself as much as he can and then, after making sure he's still entirely disregarded, stretches his heels forward and drags himself after them.

His limbs protest more this time, now that they've been informed on what to expect. He's trying to be inconspicuous in his movement, but he's shaking so badly that there's no way he wouldn't be noticed if one of the adults deigned to stretch their neck. And he has no strength left, he needs to stop again before his arms give way beside him, but instead Karkat kicks out once more, digs in his elbows, and does some weak semblance of _throwing_ his torso an extra few inches before the inevitable muscle crash.

Karkat remains prone and tries to remind his shuddering body that, yes, it's meant to fit together. The metal side is close now. Close enough that he might actually make it, so his useless whining muscles can go fuck themselves. He's doing this.

He drags his arms in again. They throb their displeasure, but Karkat pushes through it, feeling a strange, bitter thrill of power as he forces them to work, regardless.

His legs don't want to move either, and Karkat curls in the fingers of his dented arm as revenge for the insubordination. Pain stabs into his forearm, brighter than everything else, and it's a focusing pain, away from his core and under his control. He shuffles forward over the stone until his toes hit unyielding metal.

Karkat freezes for a moment after the shock of it. His angry resolve drains from him, and the next step in his plan vanishes from his mind. He can do nothing but stare across the tunnel in desperate terror, viscerally certain that the adults are aware of his small moment of success.

The man pulls his arm out of the lumpy machine. He studies a reading on the top of it, and then indicates for the woman to shut the open panel.

She does, mostly carefully, although a small amount of blue sprays around the edges as they latch. If Karkat is going to do something, he's running out of time.

Karkat grasps inside himself for that small kernel of anger he misplaced. It doesn't work. The only thing he finds other than despondency is panic. Karkat draws on that instead. He turns his head to the other side, so he can see how the rope is attached to the furnace.

It's not.

The rope leads to the portable furnace, but there's no knot here either. It disappears underneath the metal, as if the device had been placed on top of the rope to hold it down. The furnace is solid and heavy. There's no way Karkat could ever shift it.

But the adults aren't strong enough either. Right? The man didn't even smash all the way through Karkat's arm. If the rope has simply been jammed there, or kicked into a crack, maybe he can get it free.

Karkat can still hear the low murmur of adult voices, but this time he doesn't glance over. It's too hard to turn away again. He reaches with his least injured hand and grabs onto the rope near the side of the furnace. He braces his feet flat against the metal siding, cool on his skin despite the machine's purpose, and then, willing the adults not to look, brings his broken arm across his chest.

He rotates his torso so both hands can touch the cord, which glows a dim green stripe over his red-marred skin. Air catches in his chest, either from the loop around his neck or the changed angle of his body. His entire side flares, and in answer, Karkat closes his right fist beside his left. He tenses his legs, taking as much leverage as he can, and he pulls...

The shock hits mid-throat and blazes through him like electric fire. Karkat doesn't scream, but his muscles collapse, tensing and releasing with no input from him. He hits the ground with a _whumph_.

Karkat can't move. He can only lie on the stone, twitching, as echoes of the electric shock reverberate through him, slowly winding themselves out. The cave has gone silent, no more fuzzy background of nightmare toned voices, and the lack burns inside Karkat worse than anything sent down the rope. Karkat's still facing away from the adults, but they must be staring at him now. They must.

The silence stretches another moment, and then the female adult speaks. "Dien!" she says. Her voice bounces down the tunnel, and she sounds absolutely gleeful. "Look who's awake! And _trying to escape_!"

The effects of the electric shock fade, but Karkat doesn't so much as quiver from where he collapsed. Both shoulders are lying awkwardly, but Karkat doesn't give a fuck. He's exhausted. Finished.

She's wrong. He's not trying to escape. There's no point anymore.

There was never any point.

The female adult breaks from her partner and walks towards Karkat's part of the tunnel. He can't summon the interest to turn his head and look, but he hears her boots crunch down over loose stones. She's walking _slowly_. It's probably to let him wallow in terrified anticipation, Karkat thinks. But he just feels empty.

The adult's footfalls grow louder, and now her approach reaches him through vibrations in the floor as well. She steps down right beside Karkat's chest, so that the black of her bodysuit cuts into Karkat's peripheral vision, and then she simply keeps walking. She steps over his body in a rolling stride.

The heel of her boot lands millimeters from Karkat's splayed left hand. His fingers don't twitch away, even though her ankle rocks as if her gait is slightly unbalanced. As if she came a hair-width from grinding his palm into the stone out of carelessness, rather than a precise, considered _choice_.

She swings her other leg over him without pausing, continuing forward like Karkat isn't there. Karkat watches with a strange indifference as she sidles up to the furnace and drums her nails on its metal top. There's an edge of performance to her movements, like there is to so much of what she does, but for once Karkat finds himself largely unaffected.

She bends down to the floor. Her back is still to Karkat, even as she busies her hands with an object from her captchalogue deck. Despite being well in the range of his tether, she's not at all worried that Karkat will attack.

And of course, he doesn't. The idea can't form fully enough in his mind to let him even imagine it. Karkat simply stares as the adult readies a hydraulic lifting arm and works the flat end under the furnace with some effort. It doesn't seem at all interesting, like a show he's only watching because he's too tired to shut it off and move away.

The adult clicks the lifting arm several times, and the portable furnace groans and shakes. It tilts a few inches towards its opposite edge, and the adult pulls the trapped length of rope from underneath. Without particularly looking, she winds it in neat loops between her thumb and elbow. The weaving of her arms is casual, but she's finished within seconds. The image of someone singularly familiar with handling rope.

Once she's done, she yanks the lifting arm free and recaptchalogues it without waiting to lower the furnace. The metal cube clatters to the ground, and the noise and vibration pound through Karkat's skull. But the pain seems like something he's observing from far away.

The adult stands again and rolls her shoulders, stretching muscles, stretching time. She turns slowly around and lets her gaze drift down to Karkat. Her lips edge into an amused smile, so at least one of them is appreciating her show.

Her empty hand slides along the coiled loops of rope. "Alright, kid," she says. "Time's over for stroking your bulge in self-pity." Karkat doesn't react, and the adult grabs the rope trailing under her elbow. She flicks her wrist, jerking the length between them, and a new, though much less severe electric shock drives into Karkat's neck. "C'mon. Up."

She does it a second time, and even these minor shocks burn along Karkat's nerves and into the dark parts of his brain. He can't ignore them, and they drag the rest of the world into urgency as well. Forcing him to _care_.

The adult raises her hand again, and this time she also raises a questioning eyebrow to Karkat. She'll keep doing it until he moves. "Okay," Karkat says.

Karkat's voice isn't working. His throat is too dry, and his tongue runs into his teeth, and there's not enough air in his chest to do much more than whimper. But the adult doesn't shock him again. She doesn't loosen her hand on the rope, but she allows him a few moments to curl sideways and push against the floor with his left arm.

And immediately fall back down, as agony flares through every one of his injuries and his shoulder gives way under the weight. Karkat gasps silently at the ceiling for as many seconds as he can risk, before turning his eyes back to the adult. She's starting to look annoyed.

Fear wakes in Karkat's chest and twines around his organs. "I can't," Karkat whispers. "I'm. I _can't_."

The adult stares down at him. She hovers giant and impassive, and _here_ is the anticipating terror. "Nah," she finally says. "I don't believe that." And Karkat wants desperately to shut his eyes to her, but he knows better, she'd never let him, and his face muscles compromise with a wince. His exposed teeth hurt. Everything hurts.

The adult considers Karkat for another moment, and then she shrugs lightly to herself. She lowers into a crouch, balancing on the balls of her feet. From Karkat's floor-bound perspective, she's still overwhelmingly tall, but at least she no longer towers over him like a distorted, impossible nightmare of a troll. She's still not smiling, but her expression has softened. Karkat doesn't know what that means.

"What you need is more faith in yourself," the adult says. "I mean, listen. You've spent your entire life being careful." Karkat looks at her, uncomprehending, and the adult reaches down with a nail and scratches one of the scabs decorating Karkat's chest. A fresh trickle of too-bright red leaks out, and Karkat reflexively flinches away from it, as though it's something he can ever escape.

"Keeping all that freak blood hidden inside its ugly gray sack. Fuck, I bet you've never _been_ hurt before. Not really." And that's true, or true enough that it weighs in Karkat's mind like an accusation. _Coward_. He's proven that today, hasn't he.

The adult draws her finger along Karkat's skin until it hits the cut she sliced across his torso. She digs her claw into the gash, making the whole line of it sting brightly. Mutant blood wells around her finger. "So how the hell would you know what you ' _can't_ ' do."

The adult takes her hand back and wipes her blood stained finger on her pants. "I know there's fight left in you, kid, and if that's true, you can do this. And if I'm wrong..." The adult laughs once, and her lips settle back into a smirk. "Well, then I guess you finally understand how you don't have any fucking choice."

"Tell you what," the adult says. "I'll give you some help." She extends one hand beside her knee and turns her palm up into an offer. "Pass me your arm."

Karkat's arm is currently twisted beside him, with his elbow jammed under the side of his chest. After a brief struggle, he shifts sideways enough to free it, and then raises it a shaky foot and a half. But it weighs too much. He can't keep it there.

He can't reach her, anyway. She's on the wrong side of him. Even if he stretched his hand across his chest, he'd still need to roll over to touch her, and Karkat doesn't think that he _could_. He'd have to pivot his entire body weight on his shoulder, never mind that the cracked arm would be trapped underneath him... And with a despondent jolt, like his think pan drawing back the opaque window covering on something he's already known, Karkat understands what she's asking of him. His left hand falls back to the ground, hard enough to bounce on stone, throbbing along his bruises.

The adult's grin settles. She waggles the fingers of her open hand, inviting. Demanding.

Karkat tucks his broken arm closer to his body, but he can't afford to hesitate for long. She'll grab him anyway, and it will be so much worse than whatever she's already planning.

His breath hitches into a sob, and Karkat moves his right arm away from himself with a burst of sour effort. It lifts elbow first, and it's unbearably heavy. His hand dangles from his wrist, and in profile, the dent seems to cut deeper into the blackness of his flesh. It doesn't look solid, as if the intact side of the bone is about to fold over like a hinge.

The adult takes his arm with both of her hands, placing the rope-holding hand underneath his elbow and cupping his palm gently in her other one. His arm lies there like a limp, dead loamsnake, and Karkat's entire body sags with the relief of no longer having to support it himself.

The adult carefully rotates his forearm to get a better look at the damage, but it's not out of concern. Her eyes glint with amusement. Karkat knows he should be very worried, but the arm doesn't feel like wholly a part of him, now that she's claimed it. And he's safe, so long as she's smiling, right? She can tear the arm off his body and keep it if it means that Karkat can rest.

The adult makes a soft humming noise and starts to bring her hand away from Karkat's elbow towards the blackest part of his forearm. With the smooth, coiled texture of the rope, it's like she's dragging slithering tentacles. The pain increases as she goes. Karkat's chest tenses when she gets close to the break, and the adult runs her fingers against his palm in encouraging circles until he remembers how to breathe.

Her sliding hand pauses when she gets to the center of the crack. The adult reaches her thumb across the width of Karkat's forearm. Then she presses down hard, clamping her hand around him.

Pain spikes up the arm. Karkat's head rolls back as though it would escape his neck. He screams, but his teeth have clamped together and the sound runs through his nose like a moan. At the bottom of his vision, his fingers curl inward without his command. Either she's bending the softened bone so that it presses against tendons, or there's a gap between the edges of the broken bone, and she's digging directly into the softness on the inside his skeleton.

"Still works!" the adult says cheerfully to Karkat's shaking body. But she doesn't let go.

She grips harder and starts to pull _up_. Karkat thrashes, probably in hope he'll help her rip it off, but the adult just keeps steadily raising his arm an inch at a time. She rises from her crouch back to standing, and Karkat's entire shoulder lifts off the ground, the weight balanced on the point of his broken arm. And she doesn't stop lifting.

Karkat shoves at the ground with his other hand to try and take some of the load. It doesn't help much, especially when he falls back again and the world flares white with pain. He kicks with his heels and twists around on the cave floor and whimpers when he runs out of air to scream with, and eventually he's on his side with one knee folded underneath the other, and he pushes down with his shoulder and hip and rolls up into something like a kneeling position. He's sitting on one ankle and bent forward and sideways, propped up by his left arm.

It's shaking, and his shoulders are heaving with exhaustion and the effort of finding oxygen. Karkat pants noisily through his open mouth, and saliva drips from his bottom lip in long, pink threads. He's sure, second to second, that he's going to topple over again, but he doesn't. When he wobbles, the adult uses her grip on his right forearm to steady him.

"See?" she says. "There you are." And Karkat tries to turn his head, he _does_ , but it's too impossibly heavy on his neck. He can't lift it to her.

So she does it for him. The adult tangles a fist in his hair and yanks him upwards until his back is straight and he's almost kneeling properly. His neck complains, but he's desperately glad for the added support. Karkat rolls his eyes up so he can see her face through the fringe of his hair.

"I knew you could do it, kid," the adult says. She loosens one finger from the fist and taps the nail several times against his skull. "You just needed a bit of motivation."

The adult lowers Karkat slowly. She brings down the hand gripping his hair by careful inches, only letting go when he's supporting himself on his own shaky limbs. She still has hold of his right forearm, but after seconds pass and Karkat hasn't fallen over, the adult loosens her grip and tosses the arm back to him.

It throbs in the sudden absence of pressure, but compared to when she was squeezing the dented bone further into his arm, Karkat's noisy gasping is in _relief_. He clutches his arm against his chest, crossing over the long red slice through his skin.

The adult yanks lightly on the rope around his neck. This shock isn't enough to burn, only to remind him that he owes her attention.

"That's where we're going," she says. She's pointing to her overstuffed purple and green chair, which sits abandoned across the tunnel. "Ready?" She punctuates the word by shaking the cord again. It isn't a question. Karkat doesn't get to decide what he's prepared for.

Karkat braces himself on his hand and brings one knee up. He plants the foot flat on the ground and tries to lift himself so he can stand, but his body is too unstable. His ankle shakes under the pressure, and it's a painful effort to bring his leg down again before he faceplants into the floor.

The adult tugs at the rope, slightly harder, and Karkat's shoulders twitch after the low prick of electricity. He leans in the direction she's pulling, but as soon as the rope slackens between them she loops it tight. His balance is wrong. He slides his hand forward to compensate.

She doesn't stop. Karkat doesn't have a chance to climb to his feet, but he wouldn't make it anyway. The adult takes a step towards her chair, and Karkat can't stretch out his arm enough to steady himself. He has to push his whole body forward and up from his knees.

Even this is a challenge. His hips weigh uneasily on his legs, like the joints don't quite fit together, and his arm shakes under the weight of his entire torso. He can't maintain it, he's going to fall back on his ass, but then the adult takes another step and the rope pulls again at his neck. Karkat lurches forward instead, before the small jolt has a chance to intensify, and forces his knees through another step when he thinks she's about to tighten it again.

The adult watches him with narrowed eyes. "You move as slow as a one legged grub," she says, but there's that strange adult timbre at the edge of her voice. Karkat can't tell if she means it as an insult or as self-satisfied approval.

But it doesn't matter. Not to him, when he can't change anything either way. Karkat takes the pause to retry climbing to his feet, but as soon as his center of gravity shifts the adult yanks him forward. His left elbow throbs unsteadily with the shock of catching his weight. So he was wrong. She doesn't _want_ him standing.

The adult continues walking, and Karkat's choices are to hurry or be dragged along the floor by his neck. He's so tired, that last option seems worth the agony of electricity and banging over stones. At least he wouldn't be a collaborator in his own torment... but as soon as he thinks that, it's the most terrifying possibility of all.

He has to cooperate. He has to give this asshole any fucking thing she wants from him, even if he's fuzzy for the moment on _why_. Those are the _rules_ , and the idea of resisting feels as ludicrous as disobeying the law of gravity.

The rope begins to tighten against his skin, and Karkat thinks the adult is moving slightly faster. Before it can activate whatever is throwing shocks down the line, Karkat hobbles on his knees and left hand to catch up to her. He matches pace beside her leg, honest to fucking _heeling_ like a broken, tamed wagbeast.

It's easier to continue moving than it was to start. Karkat focuses on a rhythm of legs, arm, _breathe_ , legs, arm, _breathe_. The rope swings against his shoulder with the adult's stride, and Karkat winces every time it hits, even if the slight waving isn't enough to make it jolt him.

They're getting close to the chair when there's a low series of beeps from behind them. The male adult says something that Karkat doesn't register over the litany of _legs, arm, breathe_ in his head, and the adult beside Karkat twists around to check on her partner.

Karkat can't adjust to the change in time. He moves too far forward. The rope tightens, and Karkat's sure it's going to shock him, and he scrambles desperately backwards with muscles that respond slow and untrustworthy to his commands. He loses his balance on his left arm completely and catches himself without thinking on his right.

He knows his mistake instantly. The pain shoots though the rest of his mental fog, and Karkat thinks he actually hears the further cracking around the bone. He jams his other hand back into the floor. He doesn't want to look at his right arm, not with the mental visions of its entire circumference broken through. But when he does force himself to peek in its direction, it doesn't seem like anything has changed. Karkat realizes, like the knowledge comes secondhand from a distant source, that he wants to scream. Maybe he would, if he had the energy.

A soft weight lands between his shoulders. Karkat shudders and nearly falls at the surprise of it. It's slightly warm, and there are five thin pricklings at its edge. The adult's hand.

She runs it upwards and stretches her palm, so that her fingers reach gently into the hairline above Karkat's neck.

"It's okay. Not much farther from here," she says. "You going to make it?"

And Karkat doesn't think she wants an _answer_ until she starts to press her claws through his hair. He can't look at anything but the floor, but he nods his reply, his head bobbing twice on his neck. It's so heavy. His skull pounds, and the world spins dizzily.

"Good," she says, and smooths the bottom fringe of his hair before sliding her hand away.

When she reaches the rope strung around his neck, she pauses to roll the texture of it in her fingers. The movement pulls it tighter against the front of his throat, and even though Karkat's gasping breaths are unaffected, he's convinced the rope is infinitely tighter.

The adult lifts her hand away, but the weight of it still echoes in Karkat's mind. His skin, flesh, bones ring with hundreds of inescapable reminders. Everywhere she's touched him, or hurt him, or shoved into him, and there's nothing left of his body that she hasn't used up for herself. The rope she's leading him with is slack, but it feels so heavy that his shoulders want to bow away from it. A physical reminder that there's no chance of escaping the adult's control.

The adult starts again and Karkat follows, grinding his joints into motion. His palm and lower legs scrape against the rough stone ground, and each bend of his torso shakes the broken arm he's holding against it.

"There you go," the adult says. "Guess I won't have to tie it to your horns instead." She laughs once, and Karkat wonders if he's supposed to be terrified by the suggestion. He knows that, objectively, getting the jolts directly into his horns would be worse, but he can't imagine _worse_ well enough to care.

He tries to regain his mindless rhythm, but the adult only takes a few steps before she slows down. Karkat looks up from the floor and the center of his vision is filled with the adult's chair, a large mound of purple shot through with green.

The adult doesn't jump up into it this time. She sidles backwards until her legs hit leather and lowers herself gracefully onto the front edge of the seat. The cushions barely wobble.

The extra length of rope droops to the floor. Once she's settled, the adult shortens it, adding the slack to the loops she's already holding. Karkat doesn't want to get closer, though he's not sure if he's afraid of what she'll do to him or if he just doesn't want to _move_ , but she reels him in, inch after inch, just slowly enough to keep some slack between them. She keeps pulling until he's right between her knees, with his head an inch away from the chair's base.

She's holding the cord a handwidth from his neck, and now instead of leading Karkat forward she guides his head further up, above the seat cushion. He has to change position and shuffle so close that his chest touches purple leather, bringing his knees in and sitting back on his ankles. His legs are reluctant to bend underneath him, but it's still so much easier than supporting himself above the ground.

The adult's knees shift closer together, boxing him in, but at least if he loses his balance now he's not going to have to climb back up from the floor. Karkat's staring directly into the black fabric of her crotch. He's been here before.

The adult slides her closest hand over the rope and up his neck. She stretches her hand around his head, pressing into his chin with the soft pad of her thumb and wrapping her other fingers from the base of his skull to his temple. She angles his face up to her.

"You're not going anywhere, are you?" she says. Karkat stares blankly at her. Is he? He doesn't want to. He doesn't want to ever move again. But of course he will if she tells him to. Karkat doesn't know how he's supposed to answer.

Silence stretches just long enough for Karkat's confusion to gain a hollow shadow of something like fear. Then the adult quirks the edge of a grin and says, "No. You're not."

She keeps one hand supporting his face and reaches the other behind his shoulder. The Y junction of the rope is pulled around to the back of his neck. Then the adult simply drops the gathered rope, and coils unravel over his back and fall onto his toes. The weight pulls the loop tighter against the front of his throat, and the ghost of an electric shock travels through his skin.

So he's loose, but somehow Karkat feels even less free. If the adult's legs and body define three sides of the space he's trapped in, the line of rope down his back feels like the fourth, enclosing him completely. But it doesn't matter. He's not going anywhere either way.

The adult drifts her emptied fingers over Karkat's hair and onto the front of his face. With her thumb, she tests the curve of his forehead, lingers over the ridges of his eyebrows, traces the line of his cheeks. She pushes at the top of his nose, but her other hand is still clamped under his skull and he doesn't move.

"Really, you're the wrong way up for this," she says. "But we'll make it work."

She taps Karkat lightly on the forehead, and then she takes her hand off his face and brings it to the front of her pants. She starts to undo the clasps.

The adult pushes the front of her pants open. The way she's gripping his head, it's easier for Karkat not to focus downward anyway, but he can't avoid the smell of her arousal. And nothing's even touched her yet.

There's an irritated noise from the tunnel behind Karkat, where the man is working. "Again?! You're going to..." He pauses, searching for the appropriate word. "Dally?" As if everything can be glossed over by choosing a polite enough euphemism. Or maybe it's just that _how_ she's wasting time doesn't matter to him at all.

The woman snorts. She rolls her eyes slowly, mockingly, up to her partner, and Karkat is grateful that no matter what she's done, at least she never pretended it wasn't horrible for him.

"Dien," she says, lightly. "I wasn't aware it's me we're waiting on." She doesn't look away for a few seconds, but the man doesn't make a response that Karkat can hear.

When the woman does return her attention to Karkat, she seems pleased. Which usually means she's about to start hurting him again, but the only important thing is that she _stays_ pleased. Everything else is just. Details.

The adult slides a finger along her seedflap, and it comes away shiny with wetness. She rubs it against her thumb, adding the sex stink to the air. "Okay," she says. "You're still new at this, so I'm going to help you through it."

And her help has never been anything but awful, but some part of Karkat's mind goes even quieter with her assurance. He had been worried. He isn't sure what she wants from him.

"So here's what's going to happen. You are going to suck my flap. And you are going to be fucking careful about it, because if I feel teeth poking in there, I am going to rip them out of your head one by one, and then you are going to get shoved right back in place to try it again. You understand me?"

She stares down at Karkat, waiting, until he musters a, "Yes." It comes out as a croak, not a word. Karkat swallows into the dryness of his throat and tries again. "Yes." It's not much better.

"Glad to hear that," the adult says, and she does look glad. She's smiling. "Because let me tell you something." The adult's fingers twitch slightly into his scalp, claws prickling, until she relaxes them again. "Maybe you think it's impossible to feel worse than right now, but you're wrong. You are so fucking wrong on that."

And Karkat believes her. He trusts her expertise on making things shittier for him. The adult moves a few inches closer to the end of the chair, her hips shifting back and forth underneath her, and Karkat also trusts that she'll take any excuse to _use_ it. He presses both rows of teeth into the inside of his lips.

"Good boy," the adult says. She threads her free hand into the hair behind his head, and two of her nails jump in his awareness when they scratch the base of his horn. "You'll do fine."

She loosens her grip on the bottom of Karkat's skull enough that, without the support, his gaze drops from her face to her crotch, exposed in front of him. And Karkat doesn't mean to hesitate, but his muscles shudder under a new wave of exhaustion.

The adult doesn't say anything. She just draws his head forward until his face is mashed into her flap. Her bulge is hard against his chin, and membrane folds fit into the line of his lips and block his nose. Karkat didn't think to take a breath first, and now it's difficult to find air with her hands locking him in position. He could suffocate like this, but Karkat can't fight it. He still needs to keep her _happy_ with him, because it's not close to the worst death on offer.

Karkat opens his lips slowly. _Carefully_. Like the adult told him to, he sucks at the skin and membranes in front of him. His chest heaves, expecting air, but Karkat ignores it. He just sucks at her again, and when the folds of her seedflap press against his lips he, after checking that his teeth are safely pointed into his own flesh, opens his mouth wider and takes them in. His mouth is dry, but with the dampness of her flap they slide through easily.

The adult's thighs twitch into Karkat's shoulders, rattling down through his hands. He's more concerned about the arm he's using as support than the broken one, but the adult is gripping his head securely. He's not going to fall. And he must be doing it _right_.

Karkat sucks again, harder, and he rasps his tongue into a crease between membrane folds. This must have been the magic gesture, because the adult pulls him away by his hair. Her seedflap pops out of his mouth.

Most of his face is damp, covered in her juices, and every desperate breath smells like sex pheromones. Fresher, this time. "Get ready," the adult says. "You're going back in."

Karkat grabs onto a breath and holds it, and then the adult presses his face back into her crotch, slightly lower than before, so that her bone bulge smashes his lips against his teeth. He tastes a small amount of blood which he urgently sucks away, even though his mutation is already written over the entirety of his skin.

The adult uses his jaw to grind into her bulge. She angles his chin underneath, and then she drags his face slowly upwards, over the swollen mound. At the top, Karkat's mouth is back in the middle of her seedflap.

She keeps him there for a moment, until Karkat guesses what she wants from him. He opens his mouth and licks at a nearby membrane. The hand at the back of his head pushes, forcing him further against her. Karkat takes in a mouthful of seedflap, sucking and teasing at the folds with his tongue, and the adult relaxes her grip very slightly. She runs her two outside fingers back and forth on through his hair, petting him, one against the bottom curve of skull, and one at the base of his horn.

"You're so easily trained," she says, a relaxed, approving rumble. And Karkat shuts his eyes against the bottom of her jacket, and works at keeping her _pleased_ with him until she pulls him off and brings his head back down.

The adult falls into a rhythm, grinding Karkat's face up and down her bulge, pausing long enough on the peak to let Karkat search out her seedflap with his lips and then starting over. The movement pulls at his neck and shoulders and everything attached to them, but the strain is almost bearable. His chest leans into the leather base of the chair, and his sides are fenced in closely, and the adult has taken over positioning his head. He doesn't have to fight to keep himself upright, or to do anything except occasionally lick a fold of flesh. It's almost like being allowed to relax.

There's a change in how her muscles respond around him, tightening all at once, and the adult draws in a sharp rush of air. Her hips shift up, and she breaks the pattern. She brings Karkat further down, so she can rub his forehead in short, fast lines into her bulge. She scrapes against herself with the ridge of his eye, the same ridge her partner had been fond of so much earlier, and Karkat realizes what she meant when she told him he was the wrong way around. If his face was flipped over, he could still be sucking at her seedflap right now.

The adult presses him hard into her bulge with a final shudder. Karkat, knowing what's about to happen, tilts his chin up and places his lips around the outside of her nook. And he's right. Sour fluid squirts out of the orifice with every squeeze of muscle. It's thinner than before, but still filmy as it runs over his tongue. At least he isn't going to have to clean it off her, drop by drop.

When it seems like there's nothing more, Karkat sucks gently at her, to be sure. The adult pushes him away from her crotch. She settles him back into a kneel and glances him over. Karkat can't imagine what kind of mess he is right now, black and mutant red and unraveling at every metaphorical fabric joint, but the adult seems satisfied.

"Just one thing." She brings her hand forward, with its first two fingers pointing at his face. Karkat recognizes the gesture. He opens his lips enough that she can slide her fingers into his mouth, and she rolls them over his tongue, scooping up anything he hasn't swallowed yet. Her fingers come out dripping with green.

She smears them in a messy stripe over Karkat's mouth, painting him like her fluid is sloppy lipstick. The adult runs her eyes over him again, and now she's more than satisfied. Her eyes are low-lidded and her smile is loosened, sated. Karkat stares blankly up at her.

"Good look for you, kid," she says.

The adult clasps her pants shut. Seconds pass, and it's hard for Karkat to stay balanced in front of her. He sways on his knees, his heels rolling into his ass.

The adult watches his struggle to stay where she put him, and her smile never shifts. Finally she places her palm on his left shoulder, like a kindness, and shoves him over. Karkat falls to her inner thigh.

The side of his face and neck are pillowed against the fabric of her pants. Her outer muscles are lean and strong, but there's enough softness to her leg that he sinks into her. Her flesh cradles the shape of his bones.

The adult runs her thumb in slow, calming loops under his shoulder. "I like you, kid," she says. "No, really! I do. If it wasn't for that embargo on immature trolls... well, you know. _Live_ ones... I'd pack you out with me."

Her thumb is still moving over his skin, and now Karkat recognizes the pattern. It rises up and over through two high arcs, common among the spread of greens and blues, and then ties off with her own unique squiggle. Her sign, inscribed into his skin, exactly where it would be branded if he was one of the chattel species. And she _owned_ him.

Karkat's entire torso twists with an emotion he doesn't know how to parse anymore. It's like he's feeling it sharp and hot from the outside.

"Hey, maybe you'd like that?" the adult says. "I bet I'd get a few sweeps use out of you, before I'd have to turn you in for crimes against the hemospectrum. Probably longer than you would've lasted in the wild."

And. No. Karkat can't... Being broken down over and over again, night after night. Made to scream for her amusement, or beg her to do unspeakable things. Today would be every day for him, for the entirety of his life, stretched out into sweeps. He couldn't handle it, except. He wouldn't have a choice. Except.

She'd lent him to the other adult, yes, but then she'd _stopped_ the man before he could finish smashing Karkat into a vivid red pulp. She wants Karkat alive. And if she wants him enough to risk sneaking him off world, wouldn't she have to want him to stay alive?

Of course he couldn't be allowed to reach adulthood, to develop into a full troll, Karkat understands that. It would be an impossible thing to ask. But that's so many sweeps away, and he would be _safe_ until then. He's so fucking tired of worrying about stumbling, betraying himself, letting down his guard. If the adult claimed him, it means she would protect him from being culled. Protect him from everything, except.

Herself.

No. He can't deal with this.

Except.

The adult understands him. She's gotten into his head enough to pick him apart. She knows how weak he is, and _exactly_ how much he can take before breaking entirely, and she's forced from him every secret worth hiding. She peeled him open and tasted his mutant insides, felt underneath the protection of his bones. She's a crueler person than any Karkat has imagined, but she knows Karkat for precisely what he is, and.

She wants him.

He never thought anyone would ever want him.

The adult is still watching him expectantly, but he can't answer her. No. It's no, it's no, it's no. Of course it's no. Even though she doesn't _care_ what he'd like, she's not asking for permission. It's.

He doesn't _know_.

Karkat turns his head into her pants, letting his vision fill with nothing but black fabric. Her body is surrounding him, is blocking him in, is everything of the world that he can feel and smell and _taste_ , but at least he can remove her from his sight. She's still signing her identity under his shoulder, again and again, like he already belongs to her, and Karkat feels a new wetness spread into the stickiness of his cheeks. He's crying, but he doesn't make any effort to stop it. There's nothing left for him to protect.

The adult grips his shoulder more solidly. She stands to her feet, removing her leg as Karkat's support, and puts her chair away into her captchalogue deck.

"Oh, well," the adult says. She pushes very gently against one of Karkat's horns until he lifts his gaze to her, and then in reward she starts petting him again, running her nails in soft arcs between the base of his horn and his ear. The most horrible part is that it helps. His shuddering becomes slower with each line the adult's fingers trace through his hair.

"Can't have something just because you want it, and _there's_ a piece of grownup wisdom I'll give you at a discount."

She takes a step away from Karkat, leaving him to struggle again not to fall, but it doesn't matter for long. The adult swings back one thick soled military boot and slams it hard into Karkat's side.

Karkat is flung down. He hits the ground on his right shoulder, and his other hand lands beside his face splayed, as if reaching for something below the ground. His cracked arm starts to scream with the jolt, but before it _matters_ , there's movement above him and another solid blow into his back, just under his shoulders.

He's pushed forward by the force of it, torso bending in and one side of his face hitting the floor. The adult takes a step, so her pants are a hovering shadow above the scraped skin of Karkat's legs, and then she changes her stance and lands a quick, brutal kick into his hip.

Karkat pulls his knees up, sliding them as far towards his chest as they're willing to bend. It's a useless, futile movement, curling his limbs in for protection, dragging his body into a poor semblance of the pupal arrangement. Like just echoing that position would be enough to call back the hard cocoon that was once surrounding him, shielding him from everything outside himself.

The adult kicks him in the hip again, and then steps over his legs with one foot and spins her other into the side of his shoulder. His chest jerks, but Karkat doesn't react. There's no reaction left to have. The adult takes another step around him and kicks him in the side of his head. The front of her boot slams into the base of Karkat's horn.

The world goes bright and fuzzy. Karkat still feels the blows slamming into him, but the pain is a growing distance away, like he's floating, like he's flying. Almost an escape.

And then she stops. A moment passes. Another moment. Nothing is hitting him anymore. Is she still with him? One of his horns is against the ground, carrying the vibrations of footsteps. They're far away. Everything is far away. Maybe he's alone.

Karkat blinks, and his eyelashes scrape against the cave floor. It's too much movement. He doesn't know how long he's been lying here. Time wobbles when he tries to focus. But he doesn't want to focus. He breathes, and the world tastes of dust and blood.

There's a sudden weight around his throat. Karkat sees the adult again, moving in the sides of his vision. The vibrations reflected from the ground are much louder, but Karkat didn't notice her approach. The pressure grows, and it's repositioning him, not bringing him down. Karkat's uncurled from himself by the force on his neck.

His weight is on the back of his shoulders, and the adult looks down at him from her full height. She meets his bleary gaze with a blank, considering expression. Then Karkat's halfway down the tunnel and sliding over the rocky cave floor, his weight pulled by his neck. The transitory moments are gone.

It's like how she had dragged him when she first caught him, bouncing him along on her invisible string. Except, no, every time Karkat snags on a stone or hollow dip in the floor, an electric shock bites into his skin. The green rope again. Still. Did she ever take it off?

The ground changes underneath him. Rock becomes softer dirt that yields under his trailing heels and collects under his fingernails. Above him, the cave's stone ceiling breaks open into night sky.

The pink moon rests directly over him, casting everything in a violet glow. It will be moon noon soon, and that's a verse to say for luck, but _fuck_ if Karkat remembers how it goes. He hasn't thought about it for sweeps. Something about an unripe plum and an olive... what rhymes with olive?

The world stops moving around him. He's been dragged perhaps ten yards from the mouth of the cave, to a spot that's almost fully in the open, exposed. But there's a large, round stone on one side of him, broken away from the raised hill. The adult stands between it and Karkat. She lets the rope slip from her fingers as she lifts them to brush the rock's texture. Loose green coils land by Karkat's shoulder.

Is he free, then? Did he make it? Is she going to just... let him go?

Karkat never thought it was a real possibility. So he should be happy right now, instead of just exhausted. Confused. Hurting. He wants to go home. Is he going to get to go home?

The adult crouches down beside Karkat. She's still turned away, but she glances at him long enough to smirk and bring a claw to the inside corner of his eye. Lift away a pale red tear. She wipes it off on the stone, and...

She's gone. Karkat jerks in surprise, and then struggles through a fresh burst of dizziness. There's nothing blocking his view of gray stone beside him. But he can still hear her voice, debating with the blue blooded soldier not far from Karkat's feet.

Now that they're out of the cave, the night swallows some of the underlying resonance to their voices. They sound flatter, like all those adults Karkat has listened to in his movies without panicking. Monsters, but safe monsters, not entirely present. The woman is radiating amusement, but the man looks like he's scented something unpleasant.

"should simply destroy him now," the man is saying. "It would be cleaner."

"What," the woman says. "You don't think this kid lived up to his side of things? 'Cause I feel plenty entertained right now."

The man bristles. "This is unnecessary!" he says, and the growl in his words is loud enough to carry over empty air. Then he pauses, drawing in on himself. Calming. He looks down at Karkat, and there's no pity, but the disapproval in his stare is meant for his partner. "It would be a kinder end."

"Yeah, maybe, but when was that ever on offer," the woman says. "I said he could earn himself a chance at crawling away from this. Not that it'd be a kind one."

"And what if he does survive?"

"A secret, Dien? I kind of hope that happens." She grins down at Karkat, teeth flashing in moonlight, and nudges his naked foot with her boot. "He's hilarious. Best joke in all of paradox space." Her partner is still glaring in Karkat's direction, and she shrugs and thwaps his arm to break his attention.

And then time catches again, and in the next moment the adults are slinking off around the side of the cave, on their way to fulfill some unknowable adult purpose.


	9. Chapter 9

Karkat can't smell much other than his own blood, drying in his nostrils, but he doesn't mind. It makes the world seem smaller, even manageable. The dirt he's lying on is much softer than the rocky cave floor, and it molds to him like a thin layer of sopor slime.

Above, the moons chase each other across the sky in a series of slow lapse photographs, stop and start, blurry halos dragged in their wake. The pink moon wanders into low eclipse of its larger green sister, and together they sweep over Karkat's prone form like a sea dweller's eye. Lofty and indifferent. The night breeze rustles cool, numbing, over his skin.

He gradually becomes aware of a change in the soundscape around him. Dirt and gravel, shifting somewhere nearby. A warmer burst of air touches Karkat's skin, and in his peripheral vision there's a hazy silver shadow rising slowly. So hazy, and so carefully slowly, it might just be a late sensory ghost. Pre-sleep hallucination.

Karkat rolls his eyes to the left, and the creature beside him freezes, started by his attention. The smooth neck and shaggy tail mark it as a long-snouted slurpbeast, one of Alternia's pre-dawn scroungers. They're too cowardly and weak to hunt their prey like proper predators, so they rummage in the late night hours for easy prey, animals too wounded or stupid to find a place to hide before sunrise.

For a long moment, Karkat and the slurpbeast stare at each other, gazes locked, neither moving. And then the slurpbeast shakes its head, and twitches its ears, and inches closer to Karkat. It snuffles the air just behind Karkat's ear, blowing his side fringe into his cheek. Its mouth is open just enough to see fangs and the black tip of its long, poisonous tongue.

And then Karkat is flooded with something heavy and hot, like black fire stoked through his veins. He raises his arm and swipes it across the slurpbeast's face, and maybe his claws are too dull to pierce a military bodysuit, but they're strong enough when there's nothing to rip through except fragile eyelid skin and membrane. His hand comes away with burnt orange dripping between his fingers.

The slurpbeast yelps and leaps backwards. It glares at Karkat with its remaining three eyes and opens its narrow mouth in a threatening hiss, exposing its full serrated fangs and a tongue coiled to strike.

Karkat rolls over and pushes himself to his knees. His entire body shakes, and some of that is because his muscles aren't ready to support him, but most of it is _anger._ This useless fucking _scavenger_ intends to grab Karkat and drag him back to its hive as provisions and how does it think it can _fucking dare_.

Karkat might be discarded, and weaponless, and broken, but he is still a _troll_ , and that means he is never, _never_ easy prey.

He opens his own mouth to growl, threaten it right back, but the noise that comes out is a strange hybrid. Half deep resonant rumble and half high pitched shriek, and loud enough to echo in the open night. When he stops, it's because there's nothing left in his breathing organ to push through his throat, and he's panting and trembling and only held up by his fury.

Karkat lifts his lips to expose more of his own fangs, though they're less impressive than the teeth that can fit in a mouth stretched down longer than the face it belongs to. The slurpbeast paws back and forth on its front legs, uncertain now of its predator's calculus.

Finally, with a last dismissive snort, it turns around and scurries away in search of a less defensive meal. It runs with its silver tail fur pulled flat to its back, a slow moving streak of reflected ambient light, and vanishes behind a distant ridge of stone.

Karkat slumps back on his ass, his legs splaying to his sides. His anger collapses into a hard lump at the base of his throat, and in its absence his exhaustion and pain rush back into place. He clenches his left hand into the dirt for a more stable grip, and blood and sticky eye fluids squelch in the creases of his fist.

It's a victory, but Karkat doesn't feel stronger for it. Yes, he fought off a slurpbeast barehanded... or at least succeeded in bluffing it... but who would ever admit that they _had_ to. He knows what it must have seen to go after him in the first place.

And if it's active...

Karkat tilts his head up. The pink moon has now fully overtaken the green, but the sky is beginning to brighten with more than the soft white glow of their combined light. Dawn isn't far off. If he's going to make it back to his hive, he has to start moving _now_.

It doesn't seem worth the effort. Most of Karkat is ready to lie back down in the dirt and wait for the day to consume him, or whatever's left that hasn't already been used up.

Instead, he leverages himself back to his knees and leans forward onto his hand. He hasn't worked out the direction of _home_ yet, but a good enough start is _away_...

And he's stopped. Choked back by a loop pulled tight around his throat. His shoulder collapses and he tumbles inexorably over to his side, landing with a half face full of dirt. An electric pulse runs through him like an aftershock.

Even after the muscle tremors subside, Karkat remains where he fell, unwilling to move and unable to see any point. When he finally does twist around to see the rope, its green glow no longer discernible in the threat of day, leading underneath the extremely large stone next to him, he's not even surprised enough to be disappointed.

Of course they've trapped him here, tied him out in the open to boil in the sun. Did he really think that it was going to be _easy_ for him from now on, that the adults decided the most entertaining method of disposal would be simply setting him free? The only thing he's ever accomplished by hanging on is giving them more deaths to choose for him.

Except, before the adults finally departed, hadn't they said. Laughed about. Been offended by. That it's still possible for him to survive, that they'd left him with a chance. What if there's some way out of this without his flesh roasting from his bones, and Karkat just won't stop wallowing long enough to _see_ it?

The large boulder is rounded, so there's a slight overhang on each side. It doesn't look like nearly enough, but maybe if he crammed himself closely enough to its bottom edge it would shelter him from the worst of the daylight hours?

But Karkat reaches out to the crease between stone and dirt, the darkest spot, and he comes away with a handful of nothing but vegetation with small, dense white leaves and black seed ovens. Things built not to be afraid of the absence of shadows. The black pods are warm, still, at the other side of the night. The heat radiates into his fingers, and Karkat realizes abruptly that he's cold. What warmth that hadn't been lost to the cave floor is now being stolen from his uncovered skin by the breeze.

He doesn't care. It's a problem he's going to _wish_ he had in not very much longer.

Karkat hooks the rope around two fingers and gives it a quick tug, to be certain it's actually held down. That the adult didn't only leave it there to fuck with him, to see if he'd simply accept it already and lay down to die. Like he'd begged her to let him do, the last time it was dawn.

His answer comes in a taut rope and a soft jolt into the flesh beneath his chin. The weight of the rock is crushing down on the rope, holding him, more than Karkat could have shifted even if it didn't feel like he's currently held together with bits of reusable novelty adhesive, and isn't _now_ when he's finally allowed to give up because what the fuck is left.

He's truly alone. There's no psychotic adult bitch waiting to _toy_ with him again once she notices that he's aware enough to struggle. And he's glad for that, Karkat reminds himself, he is really, really glad, but whatever happens next, he has to do it for himself.

The adult has shoved the rope under the stone exactly like she'd put it under the portable furnace in the cave, but the furnace was a metal cube, flat on every surface. The stone is a very rough sphere.

Karkat _knows_ he's not going to be strong enough to roll it, but he pushes himself back up anyway. He makes it to his left hand and knees and moves until his shoulder hits rock. It's rough and cool on his skin, and it scratches as he turns so that he's more or less sitting with his whole back pressed against the stone. His legs don't twist gracefully underneath him, and his ass lands hard in the dirt.

Everything swims dizzily after the impact. Karkat slowly tilts his head from side to side, regaining his bearings. He blinks out at the view of scattered rocks and low, distant vegetation. The edges are already starting to sharpen with light.

Karkat pulls his knees up. They don't cooperate, and he has to bend them in one at a time and steady them with his arm, but finally he can brace his feet to the ground. He pushes back against the boulder with his shoulders.

It hurts. The line from his neck to his toes becomes a solid, sharp burn. Karkat clenches his teeth and pushes anyway, harder, until his mind is filled with screaming nerves and his bones creak under the pressure. But he can't hold it for long before collapsing, and Karkat slumps forward, panting from the exertion.

The stone has not moved. It has not rocked from its base, and it has not slid even a millimeter. It's too large. It's taller than Karkat would be standing. Tall as the adult had been, beside it. She must have lifted it to anchor Karkat in the open, but the rock has since resettled itself into the ground. Karkat has no powers and no tools except his smashed up body. The stone was never going to move for him.

His eyes sting, and sunrise isn't close enough to blame. Karkat swipes his hand roughly at his eyelids, furious at his weakness. His arm swings into the rope hanging down his side, and he can't stand its smooth line touching his skin. He is trapped here, and he is exposed here, and he has to get away right _now_ and he _can't_.

He growls threateningly, at the rock, or at the morning, or at himself, and kicks down at the dirt. His back slams against the rock, and he keeps doing it, driving his heels down like he's running in place. He gouges two dark lines in the ground in front of him, and the rock doesn't move and Karkat grabs the solid joint of the rope around his neck and yanks on it, over and over, and heaves his head to the opposite side. The rope cuts into his throat and jolts him continuously with small shocks that almost actually _help_ him get past his muscle stiffness, and the rope does not stretch and it does not give and around him the world is brighter each second. It's not working. Nothing is working. The adult has secured him too well.

Karkat grabs the rope further down, where it vanishes under the stone, and pulls it from there instead. He tugs mechanically, and the rhythm of low electric pulses barely changes. The rope turns between the border of rock and ground. It digs out a few pebbles from the loose dirt.

And that's not enough. It doesn't _matter_ , but it's the closest thing to an accomplishment Karkat has won today. He hefts himself sideways to face the rope and then up on his knees, left shoulder braced into the rock. He grabs onto the rope with both hands and yanks it with as much strength as he can manage, and Karkat's already screaming before he pulls because he knows what's going to happen next.

The shock, when it comes, topples Karkat over. It drives all the panic and anger from him, and as he lies twitching on the ground, he feels strangely calm and clear. Karkat waits with numb patience until the muscle tremors become bearable, and then he rolls over towards the stone. Has he done anything? He doesn't know.

The half inch of rope closest to the rock is dirtier than he remembers, but is it because he pulled that much free, or because the single effect he did have was rubbing the rope into the darker soil. Or because it was always that dirty, and Karkat simply hadn't noticed in his flailing.

And even if he did gain an entire half inch of freedom, so fucking what? He's still trapped, and there's no way he can steal enough fractions of inches before dawn.

It takes Karkat three tries to collect his limbs and push himself back to sitting against the boulder.

He coils the rope around and around his left hand, and he wants to tell himself that he's struggling in _defiance_ of the adult who trapped him outside to fry in the sun, but Karkat knows otherwise. If she can even be bothered to think about him on her way off-planet or wherever she's stopping for the morning, the adult is probably laughing at the idea of exactly this. In her absence, Karkat spending the last minutes of his life desperately torturing _himself_.

If Karkat's fighting to spite anyone, it's only that quiet, tired voice in the back of his head, whispering that wouldn't it be so much easier not to have to fight anymore, not to have to _hurt_ anymore. He's not strong enough to break free. There's no point in making the inevitable worse than it has to be.

But he has always known that he would face his culling eventually, and Karkat Vantas is _not_ going gently into the day. He's clawing and swearing all the way down, and it doesn't matter if no one else will know, and when Death comes for him, that bony asshole had better not mind getting a sickle through the eye socket.

Karkat wobbles to his feet, sliding up the side of the boulder for support and balance. He clutches his fist over the coils of rope, and almost laughs at the collection of muscle twinges that shoot through his arm, because the next thing he does is throw himself forward and let his falling momentum pull harder than his strength could.

When the initial wave of pain passes, he's shaking and sprawled on the ground. His broken arm has landed, twisted, above his head, and his forearm is a thundering hot numbness. He draws it carefully into his chest.

Karkat shifts around until he can see the spot where the rope reaches the stone. There's a wider indent in the dirt around it. Possibly. A sign that he's drawn out more of the rope's length, or that he's loosened it, or that nothing's changed and he's a laughable victim of wishful thinking.

Karkat rolls himself up so that he's sitting again with his shoulders leaning on the stone. The loops of rope have tightened around his left palm, squishing his fingers together at strange angles, but after a couple perfunctory shakes Karkat decides he doesn't care. His biggest problem isn't the level of circulation to his fingernails.

His muscles are still twitching after the last electric shock, but if Karkat's actually trying to accomplish something, rather than just throwing a stupid wiggler tantrum because the universe is being _mean_ to him, he can't afford the recovery time.

Karkat climbs laboriously to his feet, breathing heavy and depending on the rock to support him through every inch that he moves. And his ankles and hips still sway under him. He has to hold onto the rock's texture with his elbows to keep from falling, at least long enough to wind a few more loops around his palm, collecting any of the rope's escaped slack...

There's a noise from behind one of the nearer crests of dirt and stone. Footsteps scratching into the ground, and quickly getting louder. Karkat freezes. He raises his lip in a snarl, in case it's the slurpbeast come back for him after all, but when the creature runs over the the top of the hill and into view, Karkat's expression goes slack with surprised dismay.

It's much larger and faster than a slurpbeast, with a tough scaled hide and six sharp clawed feet, and Karkat knows what it is because it is _Ladeci's lusus_.

The scaled lusus is rushing between the stones with its nose inches from the dirt. It's obviously looking for its charge, retracing the path Karkat and Ladeci had taken yesterday at the start of their idiot's spelunking quest.

When Ladeci's lusus reaches the point in the trail opposite Karkat's current location, it lifts its head towards him, swiveling its ears and tasting the air with a thick, forked tongue. But it doesn't pause, and the lusus vanishes through the mouth of the cave before Karkat can call out to it. Beg for help, or warn it not to go inside, or string together some other collection of equally pointless mouthsounds. It wasn't bred to concern itself with _Karkat_ 's needs.

It's easy to tell the moment when Ladeci's lusus realizes what happened. There's a high pitched, warbling scream from the inside of the cave, like a distance muffled echo of Ladeci's own final cry, and Karkat's legs give out, folding underneath him. His back slides down the boulder until his knees hit the dirt. He shudders with the pain of landing, but mostly what he feels is nauseous.

"No," Karkat moans to the dirt beneath his legs, although he doesn't know what he's objecting to.

There's more noises of claws scrabbling against rock, and Karkat turns to watch Ladeci's lusus bolt from the cave. It's moving on its back four legs, as its front two paws are each gripping a broken orange troll horn. One with a lumpy bulb near its tip, the other streaked with black engine grease, and Karkat can _imagine_ what it smells like.

This time, when it nears Karkat, the lusus stops and spins to face him. The frill of skin around its neck flares out so forcefully that there's a crack of displaced air. A ripped strip of black fabric is stuck on the lusus's bottom lip, and it flutters when the lusus opens its mouth and screams at him.

Karkat has never spent enough time around Ladeci's hive that he'd pick up on the moods and expressions of Ladeci's lusus, but it's not hard to translate the screaming into _loss_ and into _rage_.

Karkat pulls his shoulders in and hugs his left arm around his right. "I'm sorry!" he shouts, voice breaking. Ladaci's lusus doesn't react at all, eyes wild with anger and spit flying from its fangs, droplets refracting the pre-dawn light. It's glaring him down, but Karkat is _already_ down. He should tilt his head, show submission, but he can't force himself to look away. 

"I am so fucking sorry. I didn't mean for any of it," he says, even though he knows it's just noise to someone else's lusus. "I didn't. Oh god. I didn't _want to_."

Ladeci's lusus stops screaming. The ridge of skin behind its jaw flags, and it backs off several steps. Karkat relaxes very slightly from his cringe, hoping it's decided to leave him alone where he is, and things have gotten fucked up if _that_ 's the best scenario for him. But then Ladaci's lusus shrieks one more time, neck ridge flaring wide, and it bounds forward directly at Karkat.

Now Karkat does look away, by throwing his arms in front of his face to block out the oncoming creature. There's nothing he can do against a lusus naturae several times his size and set on ripping him apart in vengeance, and it's not like Karkat can even say he doesn't deserve it. Except, before it arrives, something else starts screeching over them both.

Karkat recognizes the sound. But it seems so impossible, he actually hesitates before lowering his hands and seeking out the source. Until the moment he looks over and sees nothing, it can be true, it can be _true_.

It can be Karkat's own lusus, hurrying over the ground at its own lumbering top speed. Ladaci's lusus pauses as Karkat's approaches, but it's still snarling, now at both of them. And it's bigger, with more offensive limbs and more teeth, but Karkat's lusus jumps in front and opens its pincers in a threat display.

Karkat's lusus screeches again, and it's louder than anything it has aimed at Karkat himself, but Karkat understands the driving concept being communicated. _Back the fuck off_.

Ladeci's lusus rears back on three legs, hissing, and Karkat's lusus goes silent for a moment before screeching again, not quite as noisily. Are they trying to _talk_ to each other? Can lusi do that?

What would they have to converse about. Oh my, it's amazing, my troll has finally wrapped his pan around the arcane science of cataloging shit down the load gaper instead of back into his protein chute, and just as an aside, if _your_ little twit accidentally touches upon any of the hundreds of nonsensical grievances I am endlessly pulling from my shiny carapaced ass, I will see you both die crying?

Or at least, hey, how about we team up to track down those knuckle sponged idiots. Because otherwise Karkat can't explain the timing of how there's something here that _cares_ about him. Paradox space has made its position on Karkat Vantas exceptionally clear, and it is not going present him with his lusus simply because he wants it to. No matter how very badly he wants it to.

But whether or not they _understand_ , they're watching each other very closely. Ladeci's lusus seems to be calming down, its collection of shoulders untensing and its long tail slowly drooping to the ground. At least until it coils to the side and dances one step forward.

It's going to dart around, but Karkat's lusus meets it with a scything twist of one raised claw. Glittering droplets of relish green scatter from a shallow line catching its cheek and neck frill. Still a warning, not an attempt at _harm_ , but Karkat recognizes his lusus's ready stance. There aren't going to be many more _warnings_.

There's a second where Ladeci's lusus reacts by glaring at Karkat's with bared frills and teeth, and Karkat wants to believe his lusus would win this fight. He's seen his lusus take down some nasty things, it might even be true. But when he reaches for that child's unassuming faith in his protector, there's nothing except blank despair.

His lusus is here, so he should feel _safe_ , but he can't. He could have used protection a day ago, but it's too late. He's already broken. Why even bother fighting for Karkat anymore.

Ladaci's lusus must agree, because it suddenly backs down. It looks away from Karkat's lusus, down to the orange horns clutched in its front claws, and just... drops them. They roll out of its paws and onto the ground, but the dirt cushions them from any dramatic bouncing. Ladaci's lusus drops down beside them, landing with a thump on all six limbs. It watches the horns, covered in black dirt, come to a stop.

Now that it's not threatening him, Karkat has no idea what thoughts are bouncing around its peanut sized brain. Maybe it can't figure out why it ever cared so much.

Karkat's lusus makes a soft chittering noise at Ladaci's, questioning, and the other lusus slumps further down. It seems to finally notice the piece of clothing in its mouth, because it swipes at it uncarefully, cutting a green line into its lip in the process, until the fabric flutters free and falls next to the remains of Ladeci's horns. Then it turns away from Karkat's lusus, stretches its tail, and runs off.

It's heading in the opposite direction of their lawnring. It passes by the cave's entrance without pause, and Karkat doesn't know where it's headed, or how it plans to hide when the sun comes up. What happens to a lusus when its not needed anymore?

Karkat's lusus watches it go, and doesn't lower its pinchers until it has run completely from view. And even then Karkat's lusus doesn't relax, but only draws all the tenseness further into itself. It turns around and produces another burst of chittering, a noise of non-specific uncertainty, and it swings its head down and tilts it to the side, and squints its eyes through the brightening sky. Then his lusus steps closer towards Karkat with a slow, careful gait, like Karkat is something strange and easily startled.

Karkat remembers that brand of vague urban legend that kids whisper to each other and then try to laugh off as obviously untrue, or at least no cause for personal worry. It happened to a troll in my hive stem, or to a friend of someone I chatted with once, and it's not even a case of things going wrong because this is exactly what we designed them to be.

After your trials, when you first crawl out to the surface of the planet, your lusus recognizes your scent and knows you for its own. But there have always been stories... unverified, though Karkat has never exactly brought himself to checking... that if anything happens to change your scent too much, your lusus will _reject_ you. Knock you from your hive, or tear you apart with its own claws.

And that's nonsense, it has to be, but as his lusus approaches Karkat finds himself leaning away. His shoulders press behind him into the rough side of the boulder, and when his lusus repeats its soft chittered inquiry, Karkat says, "It's me."

Karkat's lusus is much bigger than him, even when he's fully upright. When it reaches him, standing so close that its body casts him into soothing semi-darkness, it bends down so that its snout is an inch from Karkat's forehead. His forehead that has been rubbed through the seedflaps of two adults, that has been marked with their fluid and their pheromones.

His lusus snorts hard enough that its expelled air ruffles through Karkat's filthy, sticky bangs, and then it makes a deep, rumbling, unhappy sound. And Karkat just keeps saying, "It's me, it's me, it's me. Oh god please, you know me. You have to _know_ me."

His lusus brings one pincher forward and sets the sharp edge against Karkat's neck, and Karkat molds himself closer to the boulder behind him but there's nowhere else to go. His lusus starts to close the other side of its claw, and Karkat closes his eyes, whispers, "Don't, please, no," and...

There's one last aborted shock through his throat, and then the rope falls open from Karkat's neck and slides down into the dirt by his legs.

Karkat already has his hands half-raised in front of him, to ward off his _own custodian_ , but now he thrusts them out and scrabbles at his lusus until his claws catch on the edges of its outer shell.

His hands don't respond easily, not with his right arm broken and his left palm still twisted inside the adult's rope. Karkat forces his fingers to close anyway. He pulls himself forward, up on his knees, away from the boulder's support, and his entire body shakes with the effort but Karkat barely notices. He presses his face into his lusus's hard chestplates, cool and solid and familiar. They block out most of the dawn light, and it's almost like being somewhere dark.

"I want to go home," Karkat pleads directly into smooth carapace. "I want to go home, I want to go home, please. I just want to go fucking _home_."

And his lusus screeches at him. Quietly, but it's not much different at its base than the one it blasted at Ladaci's lusus, and Karkat understands what it means but he doesn't _understand_. It's a negative. A denial, a refusal. A no.

Karkat's lusus slips the flat edge of one claw between itself and Karkat's shoulder, and starts to gently pry Karkat away.

And Karkat shrieks. He clutches tighter to his lusus, his nails digging into the places where its armored plates meet, and he cries out with short, high pitched screams of panic and horror. His lusus is pushing him away but it _can't_. Karkat _needs_ it.

Karkat struggles to hold on, but his lusus would be stronger even if Karkat hadn't already been hurt. It peels him off its chest and shifts him back against the stone, and it holds him there by pressing one large claw to his torso.

Karkat wraps his arms around the claw and sobs loudly. He can't stop himself. What would be the point of trying to stop himself?

His lusus is still screeching, though no longer a simple negative. Now it's trying to get Karkat's attention. Or no, it's trying to get Karkat to _pay_ attention. To what? But its vocabulary doesn't stretch that far.

Karkat chokes back his next few sobs, and it hurts, it's like they're physical things trapped and angry inside his chest. He gives his lusus a series of tiny nods. If he tries to talk, he's going to start wailing again.

Karkat's lusus gestures with its free claw. Karkat follows the direction with his gaze. It's pointing at Karkat.

At Karkat's naked, rent body. He's covered in large, dark bruises and lines of vivid, mutant, exposed, disgusting red and, oh. No, of course he can't go home, not like this. It would only take one person slow to retire for the day, one glance out a rectangular silicate aperture while Karkat's running for his hive and then...

What?

Something terrible, but Karkat's currently having trouble imagining a _different_ worst case scenario.

Karkat moans. It's a low, hollow sound that might have started as a failed _No_. His lusus is quiet for the moment, waiting for his reaction, and Karkat notices that the sky has brightened enough to make vision painful. "I'm such a fuckup," Karkat says. "I don't know what to do."

Karkat's lusus takes a step backwards and gently shakes its arm to extricate its pincher from Karkat's hold. Karkat lets it go, but then without the support he topples over again into the ground.

His lusus turns and runs towards the dark opening of the cave mouth. It doesn't glance back to make sure Karkat is following.

"Oh god," Karkat says. "Oh fuck, don't make me go back in there. Oh god. I _can't_."

But his lusus disappears into the safety of the cave's shadow. "I can't go back," Karkat says to the dirt by his face, and his mind replays for him the adult's voice, mocking him for being a frightened wiggler, untested and untried. _So how the hell would you know what you 'can't' do._

Although Karkat literally can't start towards the cave yet. With the rope wrapped around his hand, he is still tethered to the boulder. He is lying on the ground exactly where the adult had dumped him, and it doesn't matter that it's his own work, that he could get his hand free if he _wanted_ to. It feels like an excuse not to move, yet another _favor_ provided to him. It feels, on some level, _right_.

God. How badly did she fuck him up?

Karkat drags his left hand over the ground in a weak-assed attempt to scrape off the coils of rope. About half of the last loop distangles, but it tightens again when Karkat moves his hand to repeat the process. The second try is no more useful.

So Karkat slides the hand up to his face. He reaches forward with his head and grabs the outermost loop in his teeth. The rope is dirty, and he tastes the burnt ash flavor of topsoil. Even this close, none of the green glow is visible anymore, but Karkat can feel its hum of energy in his lips and teeth.

When he begins to bite down, thinking of snapping it, there's a small, warning jolt into his hand and the tips of his fangs. The shock is far from the worst the rope's given him, but it travels directly through his teeth into his skull and echoes between his horns. It's like the whole planet jumps underneath him.

And this was after the points of his teeth had barely begun to dig in. If the rope hadn't begun to slide faster from the rock, if his lusus hadn't found him, he'd have been here down eventually, desperately trying to gnaw his way free. Just thinking about the possibility makes him want to give up all over again.

Karkat hooks his front fangs more carefully over the rope's edge, and holds it in place while he wiggles his wrist free of one loop and then another. And now it's slack enough that he can sort of bat at it with the claws of his other hand, but no. Moving his right arm was a mistake.

Karkat spits out the rope and bites it again, closer to his hand. He unwinds another coil the same way. There are only a few loops left, and those have already loosened slightly. They come away faster, unraveling themselves two at a time when he shakes his hand.

Until the rope doesn't hold him anymore. Karkat takes it out of his lips and brushes it away. It's not touching him at all, and in the pre-morning glare it's thin and dull gray on the ground.

He's free.

He's free, and his insides churn with it. The air is starting to warm, and the temperature change spurs the breeze to move faster around him. When it touches his neck, Karkat shudders. The absence of the rope burns in his mind as a phantom line. He feels more naked now, more exposed, as if the half inch of smooth cord made any sort of difference.

He has to keep going. There's a next step, if staying alive until evening remains one of his life goals, but choosing to take it looms impossible and exhausting.

There are long dents crisscrossing his left hand where the rope had dug in, and Karkat's fingers prickle with static. They wiggle at his command, but they don't feel entirely attached to him yet.

Karkat plants them by his chest and leverages himself up from the ground, propping himself into something like a sitting position. His shoulder and entire left arm shake under his weight, and Karkat shifts and drags himself so that his back is supported again by the boulder.

The dark, open mouth of the cave looks threatening rather than welcoming, and too close. Which should just be submitted into evidence that he has the mind of an idiot, because he's going to have to get there by himself. Considering the unwillingness of his body to do anything right now, it should look too far _away_.

It's not quite move or die time, so Karkat gives in and pauses to rest. He leans against the rock and takes a series of shuddering breaths, and he feels no more ready at the end of them. But it's enough _hesitating_. He pulls his legs in, getting ready to climb all the way to his feet.

Then there's a glimpse of movement at the cave's mouth. It's Karkat's lusus, rushing out from the cave's protection. It's returning for him, and Karkat slumps, his muscles relaxing without waiting for his permission. A few fresh tears spill over his lower eyelids. He didn't really believe his lusus had abandoned him, but seeing it again makes him nauseous with something like hope. His lusus isn't going to let him die here. Right? So doesn't that mean it's not up to Karkat anymore? That he can stop struggling?

His lusus has its arms folded to its chest. For several confusing seconds, it looks like it's carrying an armful of actual black and gray shadow towards Karkat, like shadow is something that can be harvested from stony cave walls as protection from the day. But as his lusus gets closer, the illusion gains form and detail. It's black and gray cloth. It's _clothes_.

Karkat's lusus stops beside the rock and opens its arms, and everything drops next to Karkat. One singular shoe bounces away, and a few smaller strips are stolen by the wind, but most of it lands into a small fabric pile.

Karkat's first impulse is to lie down and curl up in it, and never mind the coming morning. This is an utterly ridiculous desire to have, but before Karkat can figure out what the fuck is wrong with himself, his lusus interrupts with an impatient chitter.

Karkat reaches into the clothes, picking aside the dark gray remains of his pants. They're entirely unusable, nothing but torn pieces of fabric now, the edges ripped apart when the adult had held him down and towered over him, had _touched_ him, her eyes bright with glee...

Karkat hisses. But he forces himself to keep his hand where it is. Even when the next torn swatch is black and decorated with a relish green edge. His Lusus had been indiscriminate when prowling for clothing. This was once part of Ladeci's t-shirt.

The adults had destroyed that as well, but beneath another handful of ruined strips Karkat finds a pair of black pants. These are mostly intact, if Karkat doesn't mind the missing top clasp, though they're stiff with patches of dried green blood.

Ladeci's pants, and Karkat wants to drop them and cleanse his hand in sunlight. But they'd get him home.

His lusus chitters louder, and Karkat says, "Fine, okay. _Fine_." He twists so that the pants are lined up to his feet, and works at sliding them over his lower body. He ends up lying down and twisting his hips as he inches the pants up with one hand, trying very hard not to focus on the rough texture of the soiled fabric as it touches the skin of his legs.

When Karkat finally gets the waistband settled above his hips, he scrambles back into a sitting position. Ladeci had been taller than him, and the pants trail down over his feet, blocking them from view. At least Karkat won't have to chase down the one shoe his lusus had foraged, lest any hypothetical busybody insomniac catches a glimpse of Karkat's freak, betraying _toes_.

The fabric pile is spread out now, and Karkat sees one black arm of his shirt. He pulls it free, and the rest of the shirt follows. It's still in one piece, though split open along the front. Completely ruined, but then Ladeci's shirt is confetti.

Karkat wraps the shirt around his torso. He settles it over his shoulders like a cape, and then works to guide his right arm into its sleeve. His wrist doesn't want to bend properly, and it's hard to keep his fingers from getting tangled in the fabric, even ignoring the pain, and by the time his hand is through Karkat's beginning to think that having his shirt torn open is yet another thing to be _grateful_ for. He wouldn't have gotten the sleeve on otherwise.

Karkat shoves his left arm through the remaining sleeve and draws the gaping front of his shirt closed. The bright red slash across his chest is hidden beneath black fabric, and further buried when he presses his broken arm back against his torso. His right hand falls near the center of his shirt, so Karkat clenches his fingers to hold the fabric in place. The broken edges of his sign are joined together around his fist.

And it's like a connection has closed, deep within Karkat's brain. He breathes out slowly, and it feels as though he's been holding his breath for a very long time.

Karkat's lusus is hovering beside Karkat, so close that its body casts him into semi-shade. It leans down and snuffles, and air blows damp and too loud into Karkat's ear. Normally Karkat would be irritated and swat his lusus away, but right now he's desperate for the connection. He raises his left hand and places his palm flat on the side of his lusus's face. It's smooth against his skin.

With more caution than Karkat can remember it ever using with him, his lusus swings its arms forward and wraps them around Karkat. It rests the flat side of one pincher just beneath his shoulderblades and works the other through the dirt underneath his hips. When it pulls itself up to a taller stance, Karkat is lifted and held against its chest.

It's awkward. His lusus hasn't carried Karkat like this in sweeps. Not since he was much smaller, barely pupated, although this is largely because Karkat hasn't let it try. He's been too _proud_. Now Karkat curls into his lusus, pressing his body closer to the shape of its carapace. He tightens his left fingers into the edge between its neck and thorax and holds on.

Karkat's lusus turns around, still clutching him, and jumps into a run. It starts without warning him, and there's an awful, disorientating moment where gravity yanks him down like he's shoved a stone into his digestive purse. But then the movements even out into his lusus's familiar lumbering stride. Back, over, and back again. Steady, and faster than Karkat could have run on his own. His lusus's armored plates slide into each other as it moves, but it holds its chest relatively steady around Karkat.

Karkat watches unfocussedly at the view around his lusus's elbow. The stones they're running past grow smaller as they travel farther away from the cave, but they grow _brighter_ too, noticeably now, with every moment.

It's getting hard to look out at all, especially when his lusus passes the low, encroaching boundary of reflective vegetation, all those bright whites and pinks. The air gains an aromatic scent as their dew water evaporates into the morning.

Karkat turns his head so that the only thing he can see is his lusus's shadowed armor. It smells of safety, _home_. His lusus tightens its grip on Karkat and shifts its claw up to support his head in its new, more hidden position. With its other claw it tucks Karkat's legs closer, even though the hemlines of the pants he's wearing dangle inches below his feet.

His body complains at being folded into a new position, however slight the change. His right elbow is jammed tighter between his chest and his lusus's, so that every bounce reverberates right through to his fingertips. His throat prepares a whimper, but Karkat holds it back.

He's not cold anymore. He's warm, even underneath his lusus's cool, protecting shell. The air is warm, and warming. Softly in the background, as a quiet underline to his lusus's crashing footsteps, Karkat can hear the crackle of water escaping twigs and tiny insect bodies. Newly dead things. Light still winds in between the spaces where Karkat's face meets his lusus's carapace, even if he clenches his eyes, and Karkat nervously brings his exposed hand down to his chest. He twines left fingers through his right, hiding them in the black folds of fabric around his sign.

His lusus's gait is faster now. Its strides are longer and shakier, and its chest is heaving hard above Karkat's. And, no, Karkat doesn't let himself whimper, not even when his lusus trips and staggers. It tightens its hold around him, bending his joints in further, but Karkat would have to be the pail-spawned bastard of a mildly inconvenienced saltsucker to complain now.

The ground carries them up a gentle slope and then flattens. It's the area surrounding the neighborhood lawnrings, it has to be, and Karkat's lusus makes wide turns as it runs, probably to avoid the nearby hives.

His lusus winds to the left and straightens, and keeps running. And it keeps running, another ten seconds, twenty, and shouldn't they have reached _home_ by now? Karkat's idea of where he is grows fuzzier with every moment his lusus doesn't slow down. He's been assuming it's taking him back to their hive, but what if that's wrong? Karkat hasn't been watching the route.

His lusus could be heading anywhere. Another cave, maybe, closer. Or maybe it's already gone sun mad, and they've been wandering in circles, lost, and it's too late to find shelter now.

And then Karkat's lusus brakes, suddenly as if it has just noticed a glass plate wall set across its path. It twists hard to one side, and Karkat feels a lick of sunlight over the edge of one horn, a sliver of cheek, and the curve of his ear. It's still not strong enough to _hurt_ in the first moments of exposure, but it's an ugly, point radiant heat, wrong wrong _wrong_ on his skin. He tries to press his forehead deeper into his lusus, but its carapace isn't something that will give.

All his lusus's momentum is carried through to one shoulder, and it pushes into resistance. Once, and when it bounces off, again, and Karkat has a vivid memory flash of trying to train his lusus to _stop doing this_.

Karkat even designed most of the hive doors so they can be accessed by a pincher claw, but no, his lusus has to be brain dead and push its way in anyway. It warps the vertical door supports!

Karkat remembers, with confusion, caring a great deal about warped vertical door supports. He made the carpenter droids heavily reinforce the hive's entrances last time, to encourage his lusus to use them _properly_. It could open the door easily with its pinchers, but right now Karkat's lusus has its arms full, and Karkat really doesn't want it to put him down. Fuck. He is so shortsighted.

His lusus backs up and throws itself forward one more time. When its shoulder connects, Karkat's lusus makes a screech that comes out rough and garbled, like it started with the force of a much louder noise.

The door makes its own screech, bending metal, and gives way.


	10. Chapter 10

The brightness filtering in through the sides of his eyes vanishes completely between one second and the next, but the utter absence of light is so sudden it disorients him. It might be better if he looks around, but Karkat still doesn't want to move his head, and his lusus doesn't let him go.

His sinuses are still full of the stench of blood and burned things, so it's a change in the texture of the atmosphere, more than anything, that means safety. The air inside isn't much cooler, but it's still. There is no rising current pressing into his clothes, no yawning breeze ruffling the ends of his hair. Enclosure. Finally.

Karkat's lusus moves in a shorter, more careful gait. It winds around furniture and piles of Karkat's crap, and then with each step it pulls itself upwards, huffing into a wheeze every time. The staircase. Karkat now has a precise mental image of his location, and it's like the world settles around him. All those tiny movements and nudges against his horns are slotted into meaning.

His lusus must be carrying him to his respiteblock. Where it will dump him bodily into his recuperacoon, like it used to when he was sweeps younger and refusing to go to sleep for days at a time, just because he didn't enjoy the nightmares, forcing himself to stay awake until long past he was capable of acting like a rational being.

Karkat doesn't want to leave his lusus, but he's so ready to be done with consciousness for a while, to let go and slip away. He can't imagine any nightmare he's afraid of meeting today.

He must have already started to relax, because when his lusus makes a sharp turn before reaching Karkat's respiteblock, full alertness returns to him with a jolt of alarmed confusion.

Karkat's lusus bends further down, until Karkat's ass rests on hard floor and his shoulders touch against a surface much more giving than rock. His lusus begins to loosen its arms around him.

Karkat leans closer to compensate, but he's not holding on to his lusus anymore. His hands are twisted into his own shirt, into one another's fingers, and he doesn't untangle them in time to reach out. When his lusus pulls up, Karkat remains behind.

His lusus's chestplates move away from Karkat's face, and the more open air carries the scent of scouring slime and the sour tinge of a load gaper. He's in the ablution block, _his_ ablution block, _safe_ , but he still can't shake that cloying, outdoors smell of burnt things.

Then Karkat's lusus takes a step backwards, and Karkat knows why. The underside of its chest and abdomen, where Karkat had been pressed, are smooth and pale, but his lusus had angled him away from the sun. The rest of its body hadn't been sheltered from the daylight.

The outer edges of its sides and shoulders, elbows, _face_ have darkened under the morning solar rays. In places, its carapace is cracked and leaking a thin, yellow-clear fluid, which bewilders Karkat until he realizes it isn't blood. Karkat can't see his lusus's back from where he's half-sitting, half-sprawled on the floor, but there's no way it would look any better.

Karkat's lusus tilts its head as it looks at him. The rightmost parts of its shell have the worse damage. The sun was rising on that side as it ran. Both its right eyes bulge under their protective film, and Karkat has no idea if they're permanently damaged.

It feels like a hand has reached into Karkat's chest, collected his organs, and clenched. He needs to scream so badly he's choking on it, and when he does manage to force air through his windhole, he surprises himself by not being horrified but furious.

"You asshole!" Karkat shouts at his lusus. "You shit for sponge, hoofbeast mounting idiot! There was shelter right there! Right fucking there!"

His lusus rears very slightly at Karkat's outburst. One of its back spines hits the door frame and crumples, its tip folding to an angle. Dark flakes drift from the bend like dust. Karkat's lusus screeches a response at him. No. Stop. No. Quiet. Wrong. No.

Maybe its aural canals are sore, because the rest of it has to be, but Karkat isn't ready to stop. "You never fucking listen to me! Even when I'm right, which is, oh let me check, _always_. So of course you pick the time I've decided to give raving lunacy a test run. You should have dragged me back. In there."

"Unless what, did you think I could have hurt you? Worse than this?"

He's crying again. His lusus swings a claw forward and prods Karkat awkwardly under his eye. Karkat raises his hand to hit it away, but somehow ends up holding on instead. "Why didn't you _make me_?"

His lusus screeches again, softer. No.

It pulls its claw from Karkat's fingers and reaches to a horizontal storage plank, where it takes a box of medical supplies. This is the first time in perigees Karkat has needed it. His lusus brings it down to Karkat, holding the box by Karkat's chest until he grasps the sides shakily and guides it to his lap. His lusus lets go.

The edges of the box's metal bite into his legs. It feels much, much heavier than Karkat knows it is.

His lusus chitters at him. Questioning, and Karkat would wave dismissively except his arms feel too heavy as well. "Yeah," he says instead. He stares at the box lying across his thighs. Its dull gray finish is easier to face than the burned, warped sections on his lusus's forehead. "Thanks."

His lusus backs out through the doorway. It moves slowly, gingerly, trying to avoid touching the walls, and it makes a low, strangled huffing noise when it proves too big to succeed. It maneuvers around in the hallway and then, after another moment's glance at Karkat, it hurries back to the stairs. It will be heading for the levels underneath their hive, its own space, no doubt to soothe itself in the salt slime pools there.

And Karkat's glad. Really. It already put itself in way too much pain for his sake, he'd be the worst troll to ever exist if he wanted more from it. But even his own ablution block feels too large, empty and exposed now that his lusus has left him alone.

For minutes, Karkat doesn't do anything at all. He doesn't have to. Nothing is forcing him, and nothing is going to come for him. He's safe here.

Karkat knows that, even if his breathing is fast and stilted because he can't actually believe it. His legs are splayed out in front of him, and they feel more like ablution block installations than pieces of himself. It would be so easy to leave them where they are, to close his eyes and forget. His mind is just as heavy and exhausted as the rest of him. And he's _home_.

But if his lusus thought he'd be okay sleeping on the ground, it could have bundled him into much nearer shelter. It could still be unhurt, and as terrible as moving is going to be, Karkat imagines his lusus returning in the evening to find that Karkat's followed up on its sacrifice with a 'fuck you, I'd rather loaf around on my apathetic ass pillows,' and it's impossible for anything to be worse.

Even the blank gray side of the medical box seems to be mocking him. Salvation has been placed directly into his hands, and he's still too useless to do anything about it.

Karkat lifts his arm from the elbow and limply drags the side of his hand against the box's latch. Which does nothing but scrape his hand, so he's going to have to do this properly anyway. He'll have to turn his wrist, and bend his fingers, and align his nails in a line under the metal, and twist all of them up together... It's so complicated.

He does the same thing over again, the nerveless pawing. This time, the latch catches on his last knuckle. If he's careful to keep the pressure right, he can push it up.

The metal lid cracks from the side and flops over, banging onto his knees. A few unnaturally red drops fall onto a clean black bandage, and Karkat freezes, panicking for no fucking reason, until he eventually manages to notice that he's only pulled open a cut on his hand and that it doesn't even matter. No one can see. And anyone who could would have more to see than a half inch scratch.

The top of the medical supply box is layered with new bandages, neatly wrapped. Karkat starts to pull at one, and then he pauses to stare at his hands. They're more black than gray, and more brown than black, covered in grime and dirt and red dried so dark he can almost pretend that he's a rust blood.

His hands are filthy, and the rest of his skin can't be any better. He'll ruin anything he touches.

Karkat has to clean up first. But that means getting off the floor, and he's not sure he can. His legs are stuck. There's a box on top of them.

Karkat brings his hand to the side of the box and presses with his palm. The metal is cool, and it doesn't move immediately. He pushes harder, until his shoulder burns, and finally it starts to slide. It wobbles precariously as it moves from two legs to one, and Karkat has a half formed plan about catching it and laying it gently on the floor, but it topples entirely off his lap before he works out the necessary wrist placement.

There's a clang, and one bottle bounces free into the opposite wall, but most of the box's contents get stuck in black bandages before they scatter too far. Good enough.

Karkat's back is supported by the side of his ablution trap. It's not quite squishy enough to be 'cushioned,' but it still absorbs any force he pushes into it, making it hard to get the leverage to lean away. Karkat ends up grabbing the lip of his load gaper and pulling. Gross, but probably from the _load gaper_ 's perspective. His fingers smear greasy lines over the seat.

He twists away from the trap and kicks at the floor until his legs are folded more or less underneath him. One of his heels knocks the back of the medical box, which tips upside down so that the majority of the spilled contents are hidden again under the metal. The reverberation from the hit travels all the way up his leg, his chest, right through his horns, and Karkat nearly loses his grip and tumbles down to the floor. He clenches his teeth and waits for the wave of pain to pass, or at least settle.

Then he shoves with his legs and climbs upwards, grappling for each inch. He trades his grip on the load gaper for the higher edge of the cleansing basin. His left hand closes around the hydration spout, and there. Even if he's bent forward, even if he's heaving like he's about to vomit. He's standing.

There's a mirror above the cleansing basin, and Karkat suddenly can't turn his eyes from a bright slash of reflected red. His shirt has fallen open, and the cut that the adult sliced across his chest is on display in silvered glass. The vivid red line is framed by curtains of black fabric and the snapped gray lines of his sign.

Part of it tore again while he was struggling from the floor, and bright red oozes over the length of the cut and starts to drip thickly and sluggishly down his chest. The line is huge, and disgusting, and seeing it face on makes Karkat think he's going to actually vomit.

Is it deep enough to scar? Is he going to have to look at it for the rest of his life, and _know_?

Karkat can't handle this right now.

The mirror is higher on the wall than it needs to be, because Karkat's waiting on a growth spurt, and if he bends forward a couple of inches the gash vanishes from the bottom of the reflection. The cut stings, pulling across his skin, but he doesn't have to _see_ it.

Further up, his hair is even more of a disaster than his usual "don't give a fuck" chic. Entire sections are matted together, flattened to his skull or sticking up at unfamiliar angles. His fringe is largely crusted to his skin, one side glued to the large bruise reaching over his cheek and nose. Three dulling red streaks shoot through the black, their paths separated by the distance between an adult's claws.

There is dried residue in blue and green at the edges of his forehead, flaking from his hairline and the roots of his eyebrows. One set of upper eyelashes is a solid, filmy block. Dark emerald gunk is still caught in the corners of his nostrils, his lips, the crease under his eye.

And if Karkat tries not to remember, it almost could be someone else's _blood_ splashed across his face. The troll in the mirror has the complexion of a rotting meat slab dropped in cave grime, and the cuts on his face are too vivid, and he looks like he entered a battle with musclebeast and an Imperial Drone.

And, if he's standing here now, like he _made it through_.

He looks like a _bad ass_.

Karkat raises his lip, and his reflection snarls as if he's still waiting for a challenge. One of his side fangs is chipped, and there are bits of green and bright red in the spaces below his gums. He could be Troll Sylvester Stallone, triumphant after tearing his enemies apart by tooth and claw.

It's not true. The only thing that smells, that tastes like blood is his own. But what is true is that Karkat spent an entire day as the close held captive of two real to god fucking _adult trolls_ and that he impressed them so much they _didn't kill him_.

The woman was laughing as she left him, but she _left him_. Karkat made a bargain with an adult and he kept it, and that's more impressive than a dozen musclebeast carcasses with his sign scythed into them. He survived. He _won_.

But when he meets his own stare, his reflected eyes are hollow and lined in bright red. Mutant tears have dried branching trails through the dirt on his face. His gaze jerks down, like his eyeballs are suddenly heavy in his head.

His left hand, clutching the hydration spout, has smeared dark brown beside the edges of his palm. It's no less filthy than before he got up. And Karkat can't spare the balance, so he has to uncurl his right hand from the side of the cleansing basin to activate the flow of water. It's set to his preferred temperature, but when he brings his fingers cautiously under the spout, the water is shockingly warm. The weight of it carries to the dent in his forearm, but Karkat has become practiced at ignoring that particular pain.

The grime begins to sluice off, leaving behind a mess of bruises and scraped skin, and as the water bounces in shiny arcs from his fingers, Karkat remembers that he is so, so thirsty. His tongue aches with it.

His hand isn't clean yet, but Karkat cups what water he can in his palm and bends to take it. He traps it in his lips with a force close to biting.

It's thick with dirt, and then immediately with the other shit caught in the corners inside Karkat's mouth. He wants to swallow, but he can't seem to bring it back on his tongue. He finally just opens his mouth, letting the water spill back into the basin.

The water isn't clear at all anymore, polluted with nothing he wants to think about. Emerald green and mutant red swirl together down the drain, alongside what Karkat is pretty sure is a pebble. He has no idea when a pebble got behind his lips.

Karkat takes a second handful of water, and this one he manages to swallow although it still tastes grungy and sour. The water runs too warm over the back of his mouth, and he can feel it moving inside him, pouring down the length to his digestive purse. The scratched up parts of his throat flare like he's scraping them raw all over again.

He coughs, spluttering more dark flecks into the basin, and when his torso jerks forward he almost collapses. He tries to tighten his grip on the hydration spout, but his palm slips with grime or sweat or slurpbeast eyegunk or who knows what the fuck.

He clamps down on the rest of the coughing fit, shuddering with the suppressed air, and even that much movement is hard to ride out.

His back must be really messed up. But of course it must be. The adults hadn't been inclined towards gentleness when they were slamming him around. Kicking him or dragging him or tossing him, or snapping him with invisible whips, or pounding him into stone over and over and over and....

Karkat brings up more water, and in his hurry he splashes his face with about as much as he manages to get in his mouth. And he _should_ twist around to check the damage to his back, but he's sure he really would fall if he did.

Besides, what's the point? He knows what he'll find. Red and black where there should be a smooth gray curve, and probably the pocking of craters, where they'd cracked that bone too. It's bad enough, knowing. Feeling. He doesn't need to see it.

When his hand fills with water again he carries it to his mouth. It takes a few seconds this time, and he loses most of it over the inches of distance. His arm is shaking badly. Both of them are. He's not going to be able to hold himself up much longer.

Karkat bends closer, forcing through the white blaze of pain, and drinks what he can. He shovels the water into his mouth with his still dirty hand, and ignores that pain too, and gulps it down more quickly than is comfortable, sucks it through his teeth. Until his support arm stops shaking with effort and actually folds at the shoulder. His fingers start to slip free. In the mirror, the troll's eyes widen despite Karkat expecting this. Glancing up from his half-crouch, he looks like something too young for five sweeps and alarmingly wild.

And it doesn't matter if he's still thirsty. He's done.

He catches himself enough with his chest and fingers on the edge of the basin that he can slow his fall, that he can slide his way downward and not simply topple to the floor. Karkat reaches back for the load gaper. He doesn't quite grab the lip, but his side settles into it so that his drop to his knees is almost controlled.

His heel hits something hard. The box of medical supplies. Karkat had the entire bathroom to choose from, and he put the metal box in the one spot where it would be continually in his way. His decision making skills are _amazing_.

He kicks out angrily with his heel, hard enough that the box skids a few inches over, black bandages unfolding from underneath it like digestive coils. Then, breathing through the aftershock of the impact, he regrets this.

 _Amazing_.

Karkat turns so that his back is against the load gaper and lowers himself until he's more or less sitting. Ladeci's pant legs rise in sad lumps where Karkat is fairly sure his toes would be. With the clasp broken, it won't take much work to peel them off him, finally. But when Karkat lowers his hands to his hips, making a brief detour to drape his sign closed again over his chest, he hesitates as his claws touch the fabric.

Even with the stiffened sections, they feel so normal. They could be a pair of his own pants, if he tended towards black instead of gray.

Well, yes, congratulations, he's correctly identified a fucking pair of pants. What the fuck was he expecting?

Karkat pushes down at the waist of the pants and shifts his hips until the top line of fabric is across his thighs. Then he makes a series of small kicking movements, where he grabs the insides of the pant legs with his heels and tugs them outward. When most of the fabric has been gathered over his ankles, Karkat only has to bend his legs in very slightly and... There. He's out. And he barely wants to pass out from new pain at all.

Ladeci's pants are curled into themselves, the fabric tubules hugging each other in a lonely black pile. Karkat's legs are exposed again, but it's still hard to tell how badly they're injured. After kicking around in the dirt, they're covered in as much obscuring grime as his hands had been.

Karkat relaxes his shoulders. Or tries to. They don't move, so he consciously commands them to droop, hissing through each fraction of an inch, until his shirt slides down behind him. It bunches at his lower back, and the sleeves tangle around his arms and hold them close against the load gaper.

He leans forward to ease them out. It's slow. Even though there are no metal cuffs on him this time and even though this time every twist and pull of his arms is a louder spike of agony, Karkat freezes completely more than once, overwhelmed by the familiarity of his struggle.

When the shirt does fall completely from his wrists Karkat wants to rest for a moment, but he is too immediately conscious that he's naked, never mind that he's alone and deep within his own hive. And every time his breathing organ expands, he can feel the warmth of the water sitting awkwardly in the middle of his chest, churning around and around with everything else he ingested. He thinks he's going to be sick. He _wants_ to be sick, wants to dig his claws down his protein chute and shovel their fluid _out_ of him, but nothing happens.

Karkat reaches and hooks his fingers into the side of the ablution trap. He pulls himself up enough that he can lift a leg onto the ledge, and he half slides, half rolls into the slime.

And then he has to remind himself that he's not trying to escape, whatever it feels like. What the hell is there to escape from? Air molecules? Air molecules that are touching him, air molecules that are sliding over his bare, unprotected skin... This is ridiculous. Get into the ablution trap. That was his plan.

The scouring slime pooled in his ablution trap could have stood replacing the last three times he used it, but if Karkat was too lazy to do it before, he really doesn't have the energy now. The slime is still slightly warmer than the air. It accepts him with a gloopy slurping noise and sloshes up against his chin. Karkat blinks up at the gray ceiling, rough with patterns etched by slow corrosion. He's surrounded by the familiar tingle of dirt being pulled molecule by molecule away, but where his skin is broken it stings.

This is all right, expected. Karkat's been injured before. He has been injured lots of times, really, even if not this comprehensively. He knew what was waiting for him, and this is a cleansing pain. It's welcome.

His lusus must be feeling something similar right now, submerging its burnt carapace in the underhive salt slime pools. And it's fucked up and unnecessary that his lusus is hurting at all, but knowing that they're sharing the _same_ hurt is a little comforting anyway. It's like there's still a connection, though Karkat's lusus is so far from him and they have no psychic join.

Scouring slime is thinner than sopor and it's bitter in Karkat's sinuses, but the ablution trap's side walls hide him away. They run close around his limbs, solid where his drifting fingernails bounce into them, and it's so much like being tucked safe in his recuperacoon Karkat finds himself unwinding several millimeters.

Karkat closes his eyes and allows his head to sink below the surface level. The slime runs over his face, climbing over his cheeks and scalp and, when he tilts his head back, the entirety of his horns.

Karkat usually avoids doing that. He's pretty sure the slime scours small bits of collateral damage off whatever it touches, and he's happier losing a layer of old skin cells than horn. But he's less happy than _that_ about having to wonder just exactly what gunk the adult had ground into them.

With Karkat's horns submerged, the tingling sensation multiplies in his awareness, drowning out the sections of his skin more convinced that they're on fire. The ablution trap seems much vaster than seconds ago. He's drifting in a warm ocean, but here there's no salt thickened water. Only slime to encircle him, cradle him, buffer him from the outside world.

When his fingers and toes brush against the sides of the trap, the ocean becomes no smaller in his imagination, but Karkat is struck with the sense of being huge himself, powerful and big enough to entirely fill the space. If the slime around him is an ocean, he himself must be a _world_ beneath it.

A world, he doesn't have to worry or think. His path is inscribed by inertia, and he doesn't have to move. Which is good because when he tries, he's incapable. He's frozen. Trapped in place. Caught, and above him stretching ever longer over the surface, there is the shadow of something becoming fast larger or fast closer.

The shadow branches out an arm, reaching for him, and branches again. It sprouts a tip of five stretching claws.

He would run or scream or cringe, but he can't. He can't do anything but wait for it to get large enough or close _enough_ and Karkat doesn't understand how there can _be_ a shadow, when there hadn't been any light...

Karkat's eyes jerk open. He sees green for the brief instant before the only thing his ocular related nerves register is burning.

He squeezes his eyelids shut and scrambles upwards. Karkat doesn't wait to hit the surface before opening his meal tube for a deeply felt "Fuck!" so when he does break through, he's already choking and spitting up globs of bright green. The scouring slime's tingling isn't nearly so pleasant from the inside.

One hand smacks the side of the ablution trap, and Karkat hauls himself over it. He pulls and kicks until the solid edge of the trap is behind him and he's slipping into a bone jangling landing on the respite block floor.

Even when he's finished coughing, it takes him more than a minute to get his breathing under anything like control. The blood pounds in his head. He's shaking. His upper cheekbones inform him of a drippy wetness, nothing like the touch of scouring slime.

He's probably tearing up. Again. He has to stop _doing that_.

Karkat runs a hand angrily over his face before opening his eyes and blinking through the sting. He's sitting with his ass on the small pile of discarded clothes, not that they did much to soften his fall. The medical supply box is upturned a few inches from his knee. Karkat waits through a few shoulder heaving breaths, making sure he's steady, and reaches for the box.

The metal side scrapes over the floor, and tangled bandages and a few small bottles and canisters roll out as Karkat drags it to him. Hopefully he won't need anything in them enough to chase after it.

When the box is up to Karkat's hip, against the side of the ablution trap, Karkat pries it from the floor. All the medical supplies still caught underneath tumble out, spreading into a tiny heap. Karkat paws through bandages and comes up with a bottle of epidermal repair adhesive.

It's mostly full. The bottle has proved unnecessarily large for the number of injuries he's acquired since adding it to his medical collection. But he'll make up for it this time.

The scouring slime has dissolved open some of his scrapes and cuts, and there are multiple trickles of vivid red winding over Karkat's freshly cleaned skin, under the long chest wound especially.

Karkat thumbs open the bottle. He transfers it clumsily to his right hand and, with a hiss, touches the edge of the sliced skin. He presses it close together and squirts the epidermal repair adhesive over the junction, and he holds it until the adhesive is secure. And then he moves on to the next inch of split flesh.

His right arm shakes, so much of the adhesive is wasted in twitchy lines across less damaged skin. And he has to focus carefully on the slice, staring intently into his own mutant flesh. Bright, slow red trickles over his fingertips until the whole seam is finally fixed.

Karkat examines his handiwork. It looks like the shitpath of a blind and hornless grub, but it's not leaking. He glances at the rest of his body, and considering the ratio of bright red to black to gray, fixing _all_ his broken skin is going to take hours. And he doesn't even know which part to do next.

He finally gloops some adhesive onto a particularly nasty scrape on his hip... where the male adult had thrown him to the ground, Karkat's hip grating with the force over rough stone floor...

Karkat stares at the mess left to take care of, and comes to a decision of _fuck this_.

None of it is going to kill him. He doesn't know how screwed up his back is, but it can fucking well heal without his coddling.

He tosses the adhesive back next to the mound of bandages, and it turns in a wide circle, dripping a line of clear liquid just the way Ladeci's newly broken horn had traced out a long arc in green.

Karkat forgot to close it properly.

Whatever.

He digs back into the pile and brings out a dual metal loop. Bandages have wrapped through it. Karkat shakes them off over the complaints of his shoulder and slides the loop around his right hand. He tightens it to the width of his forearm with a series of metallic clicks that itch at his fangs, and then he activates it.

The skeletal reinforcement module blinks on, lights flashing green as it assesses the damage to his arm. Then the lights on each ring switch to blue, and the rings start to grow away from each other, extruding a dull yellow-brown substance between them. Maybe it'd have been classier to choose a style in his own blood color, but that wasn't exactly an option.

Karkat watches with fascination. He's never really needed skeletal reinforcement before. The time he tried to grow one over a small contusion crater on his leg, the module winked green twice and then, unimpressed with Karkat's dramatics, simply shut itself off.

The rings reach the outside boundaries of the dent in Karkat's forearm, and the reinforcement module pauses briefly while its extruded sludge hardens. Then the light flashes pink.

Karkat knows the general procedure, but it's still a shock when the module punches through his arm, anchoring itself in the undamaged sections of his bone.

Karkat loses his balance in the flare of pain and slips from sitting to lying half curled on the floor. The lights blaze solid pink, checking the result, and switch off. Karkat's below bone throbbing takes longer.

When it starts to subside, Karkat raises his arm a few tentative inches from the floor.

It's not comfortable. The bolts from the skeletal reinforcement module pull at his flesh where they've stamped through it, and every movement still shakes the cracked section of his arm.

He turns his wrist and pulls in his fingers. A few drops of vivid red gather at the edge of the module closest to his hand. Karkat can still feel the dent pressing into his tendons, and the newly punctured bone is making itself known, but his arm seems more stable. Like if he falls on it at the wrong angle, it won't hinge all the way open.

Karkat pushes himself up, making a point to leverage all his weight onto his right arm. It hurts, but its _solid_. It's only his arm's joints that wobble with the threat of collapse, and that doesn't distinguish them from his left elbow or his knees. When he's back up on his ass, he drags his fingers into a defiant, nerve offending fist.

He reaches up for the lip of the load gaper, ready to struggle one more, and hopefully one last, time to his feet. But he glances down as he does and...

Karkat's hips are on the pile of destroyed clothes, and there's a black smear across one loop of his halved sign. He doesn't think it had been there before, and he scowls at it, offended by its inexplicability. Until his attention happens to fall on the dark slickness at the top of his inner thigh.

It's barely visible over the bruises still darkening there, but now that he's noticed it, he can't look away. It's only a sheen, thinned now, but Karkat knows what it is. Engine grease.

The scouring slime hadn't reached beyond his outside skin, so the grease is still inside him everywhere the adult had forced her way in. It's drying slowly in his ass. His nook.

Karkat gives up on standing and pulls his hand back to hover over his thigh. He can't bring himself to wipe away the grease, but he can't handle thinking about it pooling, squelching, hardening inside him.

At least the grease shoved up his ass will get pushed out the next time he uses the load gaper, but how the fuck is it going to be transported out of his nook? He can't generate the fluid to get rid of it, even if he wanted to spend the next perigee rubbing himself off. _That_ has been proven today.

Oh god, it might stay stuck up there for sweeps then, smeared black along the channel of his nook, marking out exactly where the adult had touched him. Exactly what Karkat had let her take from him, without him putting up any fight at all.

Even if the grease is hidden to everything except his own knowledge that it's there... No. He can't do this. He needs to get it _out_.

The medical supply pile is becoming more and more scattered over the floor. Karkat glances over it for anything he can use, but most of the contents within easy reach are unraveling lumps of bandages. He finally closes his hand over an unused syringe, stored in pieces. The metal tip is attached to a small motor, and the bottle with it promises to restore function to torn inner muscles. It's complete with a helpful diagram of where to punch it through his limbs, if Karkat is inclined. Karkat is not inclined.

But the syringe itself looks like it might help him. Karkat breaks the packaging with his teeth and peels out the syringe, then lets the rest drop back to the floor beside the other scattered medical contents. Then he grabs the load gaper again and pulls himself up. He turns and sits on it this time, balancing his thighs on the ledge and spreading them open, and disregarding the air brushing gentle and cool over his crotch.

Karkat stares at the empty syringe. After a brief, terrible moment considering the possibility of scouring slime burning up his nook, Karkat reaches up towards the cleansing basin instead. He places the syringe under the continuing flow of water, holding it with both hands and steadying his arms on the lip of the basin. He opens the syringe, sucking the water back.

It doesn't work perfectly and he's left with a syringe of mixed water and air, but that's good enough.

Karkat brings the syringe down and turns it so that the end is against the opening of his nook. He takes a nervous breath and clenches his teeth and then, with a single determined motion, he swings it forward, pushing the tip narrow and inflexible past the boundary of his orifice, and he plunges the water through.

The warmth of water surges inside him, lighting up the claw marks carved into the sides of his nook. He's still not ready for the sensation, although thankfully, without _preparation_ , it feels less pleasant than just intense. The water squelches through his nook, because Karkat has personally put it there like the worst kind of quadrant disloyal pervert, and he whimpers at the wrongness of it.

When it hits the top of his nook, phantom light, his abdomen responds with a weak, confused twitching of muscles. He leans into the back of the load gaper and rides it out, along with a edge of pleasure that is dulled to a memory, a question of pleasure. His eyes are stinging, but they've never completely stopped since he opened them in the ablution trap. So maybe he has an excuse for that much.

The water begins to drain out of him, hitting the load gaper slime with a swallowed drip drip plop. The liquid running from between his legs is darkened with grease, and a few thicker sections of black slime follow after the rest of the water has mostly emptied from him.

Karkat refills the syringe and repeats the entire thing. The water comes out of him a little clearer, and now that the black has turned to gray, Karkat notices that some of it actually has a reddy, pinky tinge. Near the end a few clumps of bright red exit beside the black.

This is the fluid that was supposed to be covering his entire nook, getting him _ready_ for penetration. As much as his lack there had. Not saved him from discovery, but at least postponed it. Karkat feels an odd and tentative kind of pride at these small, almost pink smudges.

Karkat can never risk anyone else seeing it, of course. The adult's hand clenching down against his bulge as her fingertips scratch over the folds of his seedflap. Her crotch grinding the texture of her pants into his knee. The way she...

All of it. This is the closest thing to sex that's ever going to happen to him. And the bright red bits aren't much, but he's not such a useless _child_ that he produced nothing.

With the third press of the syringe, the water drips into the load gaper more or less clean. Karkat sits there for several moments when it's out of him, waiting for the throbbing of the clawed lines to fade. He can feel the last dregs of of liquid gathering around the opening of his nook. It drips occasionally into the slime with a soft plip.

He wants to refill the syringe and do it again. Again and again, until he is clean inside and out, until every trace they've left on him has been wiped away. Until he is sure.

But that means the process of twisting and reaching to the basin, and holding the weight of his arms still, and the thrusting of water up into himself... and the water really had been pretty clean this time. Clean enough.

Karkat stops making the effort to keep his fingers clenched, and the syringe slips from his grasp. It falls into the load gaper and vanishes under the slime, where any evidence of what he just used the syringe for will be slowly digested to nothing.

That's it. He's done. Yes, he's still in terrible shape, and any given bruise or cut would be a big deal on any other day, something to yell about as he carefully winds a black strip over it, but right now he's as finished as he's going to get. Karkat leans against the back of the load gaper. His arms rest on the top of his thighs, which are more willing to support the weight than his shoulders, and Karkat is ready to just close his eyes here and stop moving until sundown.

Except being asleep on top of a load gaper wouldn't end much better than it had in the ablution trap. Fuck, he'd probably fall forward and get the sharp half of the syringe punched through an eye into his brain.

What he needs is sopor slime. He yearns for it, enveloping, soothing, supporting. His entire body is so heavy. It's had enough of supporting him while he's awake.

And his recuperacoon isn't so far away, no matter what it feels like. One last burst of moving, and then he can be _done_.

Karkat grabs the edge of the basin and climbs to his feet. His legs are stiff and slow to unbend, his muscles unhappy to be wrenched from the promise of stopping. When he does make it upright, he needs to keep the support of the basin. He's breathing in gasps that shake down his limbs to his ankles and his wrists.

The mirror shows him a reflection more composed, not that that's a high pile of rotting mammal teats to clear. Now that the scouring slime has pulled everything away, Karkat's hair is recovering to its more usual shape above his head. His skin is clean. Even the dried blood has been dissolved, although the scratches on his face still shine with narrower but brighter streaks of red.

Besides the three claw marks, there are cuts over his ear and along his temple, and scraped up skin between his jaw and one corner of his mouth, and etcetera etcetera... various minor damage he hadn't even noticed before it was highlighted in mutant red. The bruises are still there, various shades of black mottled over his skin. They're more visible now that the grime and other colors have been washed away, and there's nothing to blur the contrast with gray.

It still looks like he's been in a fight. A _nasty_ one.

But in the mirror, his eyes are too wide and too hollow, as if they are focused out to something much further than the polished perpendicular vanity plane right in front of his face.

Karkat sneers. "Get over yourself, you astonishing pile of sniveling hoofbeast turd!" His reflection doesn't make any response. "What the fuck is your problem _now_!" Yelling hurts his throat, more likely from the scouring slime he'd decided to pour down it than... anything else, but he only shouts louder. Like the pain inside his neck can spite the weak looking thing wearing his horns.

"This doesn't _get_ to break me! I'm still here."

He lifts his chin defiantly, to the outrage of his neck muscles, and it exposes for the mirror overlapping dark coils under his jaw. This is where the green rope had caught when the adult had dragged him, yanking him over the ground, electricity jolting into his throat. The black lines could be the shadow of the rope, as though it's still looped around his throat. Trapping him exactly where the adult had placed him. Preventing him from doing anything but exactly what she wants him to do.

Or the lines could be the shadow of the adult's fingers, digging into his neck as she held him up to see what was inside. And Karkat still doesn't really get it how her closed, intent stare had felt worse on his skin, just for a moment, than her knife.

Karkat raises his right hand to block that part of the reflection, and he almost loses his balance. He grips the basin harder with his left hand to compensate.

It's kind of neat to see the skeletal reinforcement module wrapped around the black of his reflected forearm. It adds to the image of someone battle tested, hard core. But the edge of his hand is a mess of vivid red, some still leaking from his three or so broken fingernails.

Having a mutant red line hovering across his throat is not much easier than looking at the dark stamp of coils.

Karkat snarls a last "Fuck you!" at his reflection, and his voice cracks on it. He's obviously exhausted.

He turns his head from the mirror, exiling his reflection to his peripheral vision, and focuses on the exit gash. It's not as far as it _feels_. Karkat carefully balances on his heels and then lets go of the basin. It only takes one, one and a half staggering steps before he catches himself on the break in the wall. Karkat shifts around until he's actually made it into the hallway. The door to his respite block beckons from across the corridor and a few yards up.

Karkat removes his fingers from the vertical door support. He takes an unsteady step towards the opposite wall. He's acutely aware of every line of balance as he moves, how his weight rolls on his ankles and knees.

Once, he's forced to make a quick side gesture with his arms to prevent falling. It's like he's trying out his post-wiggler limbs for the first time, except that Karkat doesn't remember it being this complicated.

When he reaches the other wall, he sinks against it gratefully. His respite block is only a few steps distant, and Karkat moves to it in an awkward side-amble, keeping as much weight propped against the wall as he can.

His respite block door has been shut tightly, because apparently you never know when the ravening hordes might break in for his unguarded copy of last perigee's Game Grub magazine. Karkat grabs onto the entrance handle, but his wrist refuses his demand that it twist. Finally he wraps all his fingers through the handle's decorative splines and pulls one entire arm up and the other down. The door cracks open and Karkat stumbles forward, catching himself on the sliding repository stack just inside.

And as happy as he had been to reach his hive, _this_ is his sanctuary. His respite block is precisely how he left it, as though nothing at all had happened since yesterday. His Troll Adam Sandler poster is untouched, and the drooping corner he'd reaffixed last evening is still holding fine. The block doesn't smell of anything but old echoes of himself, give or take a couple stale computer games and the chemical waft of sopor slime sitting ready for him in his recuperacoon, barely a step away.

He could touch the squishy purple exterior right now, pull himself up and in and then not move any more, at all, for as long as he likes. So pretty much forever, then.

But.

His computer station isn't that far either, and sitting on the flat top, beside the one stack of recently watched movies and the other stack of soon to be watched movies, there's a crumpled black shirt. Exactly like the clean, folded shirts in the sliding repositories he's leaning on right now, but this one won't require him bending, and pulling, and unfolding...

It's not like Karkat is comfortable in his nakedness, but he's been focused on getting his body into sopor. He'd never imagined wanting anything so much. But now, in view of the opportunity to hide the mess on his torso under the lines of his unbroken sign, Karkat wants that at least enough to make this very slight detour. Even though it is a silly thing to want, because what kind of dense sponged recuperacoon wetter would try to sleep in their clothes.

Karkat pushes himself off the repository stack and begins the slow stumble to his computer station. He's once again aware of the sensation of his body being a collection of poorly matched pieces, of his legs and hips not fitting together properly. Pain vibrates up his bones each time he steps. He keeps moving, careful, careful, and when he reaches the station he leans his palms flat on its surface, letting his shoulders take the weight from his ankles. It does the opposite of _help_ , though Karkat is distracted for a few moments by how his arm flexes under the reinforcement module.

Karkat lets go and sinks into his chair. There is a wad of gray bunched to one side, and when Karkat moves to push it on the floor, it reveals itself as a pair of pants. Karkat's also not enjoying having his seedflap dangle free, so he brings the pants down and scoops his legs into them. He pulls the gray fabric up his legs, standing again for the half second necessary to yank it over his ass.

Then Karkat takes the shirt and pretty much dumps it over his head. It takes him a while to line up his head and arms to the appropriate fabric tunnels. For the first moments, it's actually comforting. It's cozy and dark and he's already worn it, so it smells like part of himself. It could be a close-fitting and unusually dry recuperacoon. But then, when one arm gets caught elbow-first in an armhole, he realizes that familiar or not, it's trapping him inside, and he jerks and struggles madly to get free. By the time the shirt's on properly, Karkat's panting and there's a short rip along the neckhole. His right arm is pulling at the shoulder's fabric. The reinforcement module doesn't fit easily underneath.

It's good enough. Being back under gray makes him feel safer, hidden, even if it wouldn't fool anyone who happened to look at his _face_. He feels more like himself.

Or a version of himself that is _ready for sleep_.

But before he gets up, Karkat notices that while he was engaged in epic battle with his clothes, he must have bumped a peripheral to announce his presence because the computer screen is no longer an idle black. It's filled completely with notification windows from his chat client, all of them blinking urgently for his attention, and all of them filled with ugly yellow text.

"Oh, what the nub fondling fuck." Karkat squints in at a random yellow monologue. It starts

twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling  carcinoGeneticist [CG]

TA: you know how youre alway2 twii2tiing your horn2 about iif were friiend2 anymore?  
TA: well GUE22 WHAT A22HOLE.  
TA: WERE NOT.

and Karkat closes it without scanning to completion. It reveals another, previously buried window, and Karkat's eyes fall on

TA: lii2ten. ii diidnt mean iit, okay? ii wouldnt want to be on a team wiith a grubmunch liike me eiither.  
TA: 2hiit that wa2 even more pathetiic thii2 tiime.  
TA: FUCK why am ii 2uch a u2ele22

before he closes that one too. And beneath it is yet another message, something about

2ent your character on a random walk.  
TA: ii am laughiing my a22 off watchiing 2iir nookflap bulge2teiin wander 2traiight iinto enemy broad2word2.  
TA: ehehe hii2 face look2 almo2t a2 2tupiid a2 your2 doe2.  
TA: ii had to hack the character de2iign2 two get the horn2 blunt enough.

And when Karkat destroys _that_ he uncovers, still waiting

twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling  carcinoGeneticist [CG]

TA: no 2eriiou2ly why havent you logged iinto the 2erver yet?  
TA: diid you forget you were goiing to be our thra2her, after you whiined for a week that you diidnt want two play cleriic agaiin?

Karkat leans back and blinks at the whole expanse of his display, and holy troll bulgefisting Almighty. How many layers deep is this crap, none of which Karkat is in the mood for.

Yes, clicking mindlessly at his chat client feels surreally _normal_ , but there's no surge of familiar, spurring irritation. Instead, every line of text leaves him heavier, and trying to parse the overwrought mustard quirk is making the back of his head pound.

This time, instead of shutting a single conversation, Karkat chooses "close all from user." The yellow windows wink out one by one, and there are fucking dozens of them. Hundreds. Karkat needs to find less awful friends.

As example number two reveals in indigo, excavated from the yellow messages.

terminallyCapricious [TC] began trolling  carcinoGeneticist [CG]

TC: HeEeEyY mUtHeRfUuU

\--  terminallyCapricious [TC] is now an idle troll! --

terminallyCapricious [TC] ceased trolling  carcinoGeneticist [CG]

And that's it, because keeping his think pan on task long enough to string together two words at a time is literally too much of a challenge for this idiot.

If only _all_ the idiots in Karkat's life had this problem.

Karkat shuts the window with what he wants to imagine is an angry click, even though it was actually the slightest possible movement of his finger on the keyboard. Then there are only two chat messages left.

Karkat stares at the relish green one for a long time.

TO THIS AGAIN.  
CG: AND WHAT? DID YOU TOSS YOUR POINTLESS FIVESTONES IN ITS GENERAL DIRECTION AND THEN THE MUSCLEBEAST TOPPLED OVER CONFUSED TO DEATH.  
RR: oh/ yes/ that's exactly what happeNed.  
RR: but with more aNimal shrieKiNg.  
RR: galthrapKiNd are amaZiNg weapoNs/ really/ if you have better aim thaN aN armless slimebeast/  
RR: liKe some of us do.  
RR: and you would admit it if you wereN't such a ragiNg asshole wheN it comes to KiNda/ oh/ everythiNg!  
CG: I CANNOT BELIEVE THE HOOFBEAST SHIT YOU ARE TRYING TO CRAM THROUGH MY OCULAR ORB SLOTS.  
RR: that's oNly because you didN't see the body yet.  
CG: IS THAT SO?  
CG: FINE. LET'S GO.  
RR: uh/ Now?  
CG: SURE, WHY NOT?  
RR: oh/ i doN't KNow/ KarKat.  
RR: it's goiNg to be morNiNg sooN. i'd rather taKe you tomorrow.  
CG: AT WHICH POINT THE BODY WILL HAVE BEEN CONVENIENTLY DISPLACED BY A CLIQUE OF MAMMAL PHALLUS FETISHISTS.  
CG: NO, WE CAN GO BEFORE YOU COME UP WITH ANY EXCUSES, AND WHEN THE BODY IS STILL CONVENIENTLY DISPLACED YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR ONLINE STATUS TO PERSONAL POLISHER OF MY HORNS.  
CG: I JUST NEED A MOMENT TO GRAB MY SPECIAL DEALING WITH IDIOTS HAT AND THEN I'LL BE STANDING OUTSIDE. WAITING.  
RR: but i've Never seeN you wear a hat.  
CG: NO THAT WAS  
CG: WHY DO I EVEN BOTHER.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling  rockersRuin [RR]

Karkat scrolls to his contact list and sets Ladeci's status to "Culled". Ladeci's icon vanishes from Karkat's list, and the information will be propagated through the network to anyone else who deals with Ladeci's account.

An alert box asks Karkat if he wants to delete his and Ladeci's chatlogs, and Karkat freezes in indecision. Ladeci is gone, and he never passed along any galaxy shaking insights. So, "Yes," obviously. There's no benefit in keeping them. But having all evidence of Ladeci's existence vanish from Karkat's computer feels wrong. Unfair, as if unfair was ever a thing that mattered.

So "No" then... but the question blazes out from Karkat's screen in a large bold text, and he feels sick. He can't bring himself to click.

He hesitates so long that the chat client gets impatient and chooses for itself, settling on some default value. Karkat watches through the entire override countdown, and he still isn't sure which option it picked.

The gray and relish green conversation closes. The last chat window is written solely in teal.

gallowsCalibrator [GC] began trolling  carcinoGeneticist [CG]

GC: K4RK4T! STOP 1GNOR1NG YOUR 4PPL3B3RRY TH3M3D FR13ND!  
GC: TH3 COURT H4S B33N FORC3D TO TURN 4 BL1ND NOS3 TO NO L3SS TH4N FOUR D4ST3RDLY CR1M1N4LS WH1L3 1TS ST4R PROS3CTUTOR W4S STUCK D34L1NG W1TH H1S SOUR MUST4RD SH1TF1T  
GC: 1 SHOULD STR1NG YOU UP FOR OBSTRUCT1ON OF JUST1C3 BY PROXY!  
GC: H3LLO? K4RK4T? 4R3 YOU TH3R3?  
GC: >:T  
GC: BL444R YOU 4R3 TH3 MOST FRUSTR4T1NG

gallowsCalibrator [GC] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]

Karkat shuts that one down too.

And he starts to move the cursor to shut the whole computer down, but he's interrupted by a _new_ chat box popping into existence in front of him.

twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]

TA: hey KK iif you get thii2 me22age ii ju2t wanted two 2ay  
TA: you can CRAM IIT UP YOUR NOOK becau2e iit2 the LA2T ONE ii am EVER goiing two 2end you  
TA: and iif you want two contact me, dont bother.  
TA: iim banniing you from my chat cliient.  
TA: here ii go.  
TA: iim liiftiing my fiinger.  
TA: iim cliickiing down on your iicon.  
TA: thii2 iinterface ii2 an dii2grace two iinnocent 2emiicolon2 but iim goiing two 2ettiing2 anyway.  
CG: OH MY GOD WHAT DO YOU EVEN ACTUALLY WANT.  
TA: 2ure now youre wiilliing two talk two me.  
TA: but TWO BAD. IIT2 TWO LATE. WERE DONE.  
CG: YES, YOU'RE RIGHT. I'M THE ABSOLUTE WORST FRIEND. IT'S ME.  
CG: WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T I INTERRUPT THE ADULTS HOLDING ME CAPTIVE FOR THE PAST DAY AND SAY EXCUSE ME, BUT IF IT'S NOT TOO MUCH TROUBLE, COULD I PLEASE HAVE A TIME OUT FROM GETTING MY FACE SMASHED INTO ADDED PULP GRUBSAUCE WHILE I CHECK IN WITH A CODEPENDENT NUBSUCKLING MORON OF MY ACQUAINTANCE.  
CG: IN FACT, COULD I BORROW YOUR COMPUTER FOR THE PURPOSE?  
CG: WE CAN GET BACK TO THE TORTURE AS SOON AS I'M DONE ACKNOWLEDGING HIM THE CROWN PRINCE OF SPAZVILLE.  
TA: wow, you are 2o full of 2hiit ii am amazed your horn2 havent exploded off your head.  
TA: gey2ers of pulpy brown iidiiot 2auce 2hootiing from the hole where your 2ponge ii2nt.  
TA: iif you wanted two back out FIINE.  
TA: you could have just 2aiid that youre 2iick of lii2teniing two me beiing terriible and pathetiic and my emotiional ii22ue2 whiich are NONE OF YOUR BU2IINE22 ANYWAY iin2tead of makiing up B2 NON2EN2E.  
TA: but ii gue22 iim not a2 much of a moron a2 you thought, becau2e ii know there ii2 NO WAY you fought off an adult, you aggrandiiziing ba2tard.  
CG: TWO  
TA: what.  
CG: TWO ADULTS.  
CG: YOUR FAVORITE FUCKING NUMBER. HOW THE FUCK DID YOU MISS THE FUCKING PLURAL YOU STUPID FUCK.  
TA: yeah that2 WAY more beliievable.  
TA: diid you tell them what an amaziing leader you are, and they 2aiid holy 2hiit we diidnt realiize.  
TA: hey everybody iit turn2 out we have KARKAT VANTA2 here.  
TA: quiick let2 drop two our knee2 and take turn2 kii22iing hii2 2tiinkiing bulge, that 2ound2 liike 2o much more fun than u2iing hii2 gut2 for party decoratiion2.  
CG: NO. I CAN'T DEAL WITH THIS.  
TA: liike you even KNOW HOW two 2top beiing an iincontiinent wriiggler long enough two deal wiith ANYTHIING.  
CG: SHUT UP. SHUT UP. YOU NEED TO CLAMP YOUR SEEDFLAP SHUT RIGHT NOW OR I SWEAR I WILL REACH THROUGH THIS SCREEN AND CLAW IT OFF YOUR UGLY LISPING FACE.  
CG: OH.  
CG: AND BY THE WAY. LADECI IS DEAD.  
TA: 2o what? who the fuck ii2 ladecii?  
TA: ...  
TA: KK?  
TA: KK waiit.

\-- carcinoGeneticist's [CG'S] computer has been smashed to the floor. --

Karkat stares at the pulpy blue heap splattered by his desk. He's standing, and his shoulders are shaking with the effort of it. His hands are clenched into fists.

That was a stupid thing to do. Now he's going to have to grow a whole new computer.

Yet as he watches a chunk of the computer's outer shell break away and coast to the floor on a stream of chemical ooze, Karkat can't manage to care. The contents of his data storage unit are slimed across his station and floor and the nearest wall, but the hot twisting in his center is not regret.

The burn of constant, non-differentiated anger had seemed to underscore his whole life, but Karkat's slow to recognize it. The emotion is strange and uncomfortable, like his chest is suddenly the wrong shape. He wants to punch something. It doesn't matter what. The entire world, or himself, or the computer again.

Karkat only had one station top computer, so he swings his arm out and smashes his skeletal reinforcement module through the movies stacked beside him. The impact jars him to the points of his teeth, and the movies scatter wildly into the air around his block. They bounce off the wall and hit the floor at bad angles. Some of them break out of their protective casing.

One flat disk bounces onto its side and rolls along his floor. It turns in increasingly wobbling spirals until it runs out of momentum and folds over, flat. There's a deep scratch gauged into its side, as if Karkat had torn through it with his claws, and Karkat is glad to see it.

The top of his computer station is empty now. Karkat shoves his arms under the ledge and makes a very brief attempt to flip it over, but his knees give out before the station moves. Karkat ends up with his torso sprawled over the surface. He kicks backwards, and his chair topples with a clatter that is satisfying but not good _enough_.

Karkat yanks open the computer station's topmost sliding repository, the one where he keeps a backup sickle, and clenches a fist around the handle.

He leverages himself back to his feet, more carefully than fits his mood, but he's already one wrong horn twitch from falling over. The chair is legs over seat, and Karkat bares his fangs and hooks his sickle through its yellow outer layer. He pulls up, and his sickle tears a ragged line. A few inches of the chair's insides spring up, along with a small amount of ooze from the gash, but he meant to injure it far more severely.

Karkat swings his sickle down again and scours another line crossed to the first. More spongy innards swell out. But it's still not enough to render the chair unusable, so Karkat digs into the chair with the sickle's curved point, stabbing and ripping until the sickle gets stuck around the solid inner structure. Karkat yanks at the handle, but it doesn't come free. All he accomplishes is nearly knocking himself down. Finally he growls at the sickle in frustration and throws it from his palms. He adds a kick at the remains of the chair in revenge for the theft, and then he catches his ass on the computer station when he overbalances and begins to tilt backwards.

The chair is still recognizable, but with its surface torn to open strips and its stuffing and suspension gel half spilled on the floor, no one would mistake it for anything but trash. Karkat's chest heaves with exertion and his back and shoulders burn more each second he allows himself to calm, but it's worth it for the sense that he triumphed over something, no matter how unmatched and ridiculous the fight. And the hurt is okay, because he's going to take it and dump himself into his recuperacoon and...

Someone is watching him.

Karkat's hand reaches for his sickle, but it is stabbed through the chair below him and not hanging at his side. He is once again unarmed. He thought he was safe here.

What kind of moronic excuse is _that_?

He doesn't move, just keeps his eyes pointed at the opposite wall and takes slow, shallow breaths.

Karkat doesn't smell anything but the slime in his recuperacoon and the evaporating chemical remains of his computer's data storage unit. Nothing unexpected. Nothing that is a threat.

But some deep instinct had been so sure... Karkat turns his head to the side, and yes, an adult is there to meet his gaze. The angles of her face hit him like a blow directly to the abdomen. Panic floods through his veins, which makes no sense. She isn't real. It's just Troll Meg Ryan smiling her harsh satisfaction from behind The Sea Troll Suitor Who Was Justly Executed For Heresy Two Centuries Before Her Hatchdate, Yet Fate Has Another Chance When A Poorly Explained Starship Malfunction Deposits The Sea Troll Into The Present Quarters Of Her Recently Culled Matesprit...

Troll Meg Ryan's claws grip possessively into Troll Hugh Jackson's shoulder, denting the fabric of his jacket. Troll Jackson is twisted to focus on her face, despite the awkwardness of the position. The fins under his ear droop in the relaxation of trust or submission.

Karkat snarls and stomps to the poster. His feet squelch through his computer's innards and the sharp bits of its case poke into his toes, but who gives a fuck if they scratch through his skin now? He can feel each violent step rattle through his hips, but it's an angry pain. A good pain. And nothing less than he deserves, for getting freaked out by a fucking _movie poster_.

Troll Meg Ryan's amused gaze is directed over Karkat's head, and Karkat growls and swipes his claws across her face. They tear gashes through the poster, and even its thin paper resistance stings his broken nails and messed up fingers. A few splatters of blue computer gel mar the gray of her skin, like it's Troll Meg Ryan herself Karkat injured, not her lime blooded character.

Karkat brings up both hands and tears at the poster, scratching out Troll Meg Ryan's eyes and bisecting Troll Hugh Jackson's face at the nose. He rips Troll Hugh Jackson's shoulder from Troll Meg Ryan's head and rips Troll Meg Ryan's head from her horns, and soon there's nothing but ragged tatters affixed to his respite block wall.

Karkat glares down at the yellow scrap holding Troll Meg Ryan's disembodied eye, and he remembers that he really liked that poster. What was this supposed to accomplish?

But two yards over, Troll Adam Sandler smirks mockingly in Karkat's general direction. Troll Sandler is raising a phalanx activated telemanipulator to his shoulder, like it's a whipkind weapon he's preparing to crack, but this manipulator is supposed to grant him control over all paradox space. His finger hovers over a button marked _SKIP (to the end)_.

"Make sure you fondle the raised nub labeled _go fuck yourself_ ," Karkat says, and when Troll Sandler doesn't flinch Karkat goes over and tears his flat paper smile from his flat paper face. And this is pointlessness squared, but even if they're only mass reproducible prints of snickering trolls, there is something satisfying about reducing them to tatters by his feet.

Beside the slashed representation of Troll Adam Sandler, Troll Kate Hudson and Troll Anne Hathaway point improvised weapons at each other's throats. A standoff between moirails waxing black in the stress of awaiting the Drone, and with only a self amused indigo blood in pant-suits willing to step between them.

Karkat yanks that poster down and tears it into quarters in his hands. He tries for eighths, but the layers of poster material are too thick. The reinforcement module pulls inside his arm, and fresh bright red trickles up towards his elbow. Karkat gives up and tears the poster with his teeth instead. He bites off Troll Hathaway's ear, cheekbones, Troll Hudson's fingers and spits them onto the floor.

Karkat is still shaking, still angry, but he glares at the wall behind his computer station and there's nothing intact enough to look back. _Good_. He turns away, as haughtily as he can while stumbling over his own ankles, and approaches his recuperacoon. Karkat doesn't remember the top of it being this far off the ground, but it doesn't matter. He's going to have to get up there anyway.

He goes to the corner he usually uses to climb up. The indents in the surface are too shallow to grip, and he's sure jumping like he usually does to reach the top would end badly. He ends up leaning over it, supporting himself as much as he can with chest against the lumpy purple surface. He grabs as far as he can with his nails, digs in, and pushes with his legs, clambering up until he's resting on the recuperacoon rather than the floor. After moving, the tops of his thighs are cool and squelchy with the water residue still dripping from his nook. Karkat tries not to think about it. He finally rolls over.

And from his place of honor high on Karkat's wall, Troll Will Smith grins down at Karkat. A line of thick, even fangs rest on his lower lip, and the partial curve of his tongue is visible inside his mouth.

Troll Will Smith is smirking at the room beyond the poster, but there's a humor to it, assuring the viewer that they're in on the joke.

He has his weapon hand wrapped with faux abandon around the much shorter Troll Alfonso Ribeiro's shoulder. Troll Will Smith's sickle dangles down beside Troll Ribeiro's sign. His wrist is loose, but a twitch of his fingers and Troll Alfonso Ribeiro would be bleeding out blue.

Troll Ribeiro doesn't seem bothered by this, setting the photo in one of Troll Smith and Troll Ribeiro's characters' on and off moirallegiances. Troll Ribeiro also smirks at the viewer as he twists his hands into a well known rust blood greeting gesture... which he's doing _wrong_.

Highbloods, right? They just don't get it.

That's the punchline.

The poster's tag informs Karkat that Troll Will Smith is teaching his highblood flaysquad-mates _the meaning of FUN... without an utterance dissection tome!_

This poster had come special. It was a limited release edition with preorders of _The Thresh Prince of Bel-Air_ 's season four collection. It's such a great show, and Troll Will Smith is such a great actor. Karkat knows it's dumb, but he always feels like Troll Will Smith is looking right to him personally as Karkat drifts in his recuperacoon. Proving what everyone knows anyway, that highbloods are totally mockable, promising him that he doesn't need blue pumping through his arteries to _make it_. It's comforting, and it's not like the thick taper of Troll Will Smith's horns is acid in his orb slots.

But right now Troll Will Smith's inked gaze feels weird, like Karkat is the one on display instead of the poster. Karkat's body is so heavy, but he can't stand lying flat and low under Troll Will Smith's judging green eyes. The idea of spending the day resting under his amused smirk makes Karkat's breathing organ tighten.

Karkat drags himself over and climbs to his feet. He braces one arm against the wall to keep him upright on the lumpy surface.

From this vantage point, Troll Will Smith is exposed as a miniature. Karkat is taller than him, realer and more dangerous. But the poster keeps smirking out, unintimidated, and Karkat lashes with his free hand and scratches out Troll Will Smith's face.

The ruin of his favorite poster burns thick in Karkat's throat, loss and anger, triumph and a knee-shaking guilt he can't follow to its source. Karkat tears out Troll Alfonso Ribeiro's face too and then rips through his comically ornate blue sign. Then Karkat removes the entire poster and throws it over the recuperacoon's side. It wafts down gently to his respite block floor.

And fuck, his block is a disaster. Soppy smashed bits of computer and chair, and ripped scraps of posters, and scattered movie cases.

Karkat couldn't keep his shit together for the thirty second marathon between his station and his recuperacoon, and now he's going to have to clean all this crap up. Replace his computer. His computer chair. Wander back to his ablution block and turn off the fucking hydration spout.

But when Karkat imagines the alternative, waking up into a hive that it looks exactly the way it did when he left, exactly how it always looks and all his stuff in place and no evidence that anything happened, the line of anger supporting him seeps from Karkat's legs. He folds down to the surface of his recuperacoon.

This time, Karkat pushes himself through the opening to the recuperacoon and lands inside with an ungainly slurp. The sopor slime catches him before he sinks more than a few inches down, suspending his battered limbs in place. So much of the aching in his joints vanishes as soon as they don't have to support each other, and the sudden lack of pain is a jolt of its own. The slime feels slow and strange, creeping into the inside of his full set of clothes, but it works just like it always does, soothing his thoughts to numbness.

He'll pick up the pieces in the evening. Right now, what Karkat wants is _nothing_.

Karkat can still see marks from the poster's double sided adhesive strips. Where they touched the wall, its texture is very slightly scarred. Karkat watches them until the sopor slime blurs everything out and drags him into unconsciousness.

.  
.  
.  
.  
.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for reference:
> 
> Poster 1: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0m6frtyty1r8jzvu.jpg  
> Poster 2: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0m6g4KlTq1r8jzvu.jpg  
> Poster 3: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0m6gijX8X1r8jzvu.jpg  
> Poster 4: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0m6hjznTY1r8jzvu.jpg
> 
> Ending Author's Notes are here: http://homesmut.livejournal.com/5183.html?thread=32326975#t32326975


	11. ALTERNATE ENDING

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have read up to this point, congratulations, you've made it through the complete story.
> 
> This chapter is an Alternate Ending, or a bonus extra scene that ended up getting away from me. I consider it completely optional, especially as it diverges away from "Hivebent prequel." 
> 
> All the warnings still apply, plus character death like as to canon.

It's dark, not even midnight, and there's only one moon edging over the horizon. Karkat is jumpy anyway, startling at places in his peripheral vision that he's sure should be shadowed and that, when he spins towards them for closer examination, _are_.

Karkat squeezes his palm tighter around the sweet-spice flora strips he’d torn away. If he stashed them in his sylladex it would give him another hand to hold a sickle in, but Karkat still hasn't mastered his modus to a degree he would like to admit. He's not certain enough he could recover the plant skin before it rotted in a locked cube, in which case why is he out here at all?

He shouldn't have to be. His lusus brought home half a hoofbeast carcass, and it _knows_ Karkat won't eat hoofbeast unless it has been seasoned with fresh sweet-spice, and look at this, there is a copse of sweet wood barely five minutes out from the border of the lawnring. His lusus must have passed that on its way to the hive.

There's no reason it wouldn't have grabbed some, unless it was trying to make a point. Karkat has never made a frequent habit of venturing from his hive, but the past few perigees he's really been... too busy.

So what, now his lusus thinks Karkat's too lazy to grab a few flora strips? It is so stupid. And this is a waste of Karkat's time.

Karkat runs back to the flat circle of his lawnring. The neighboring hive angles to the side of his vision as he gets closer, revealing his own home once again. After he crosses onto the shared grounds, Karkat slows into a casual but steady jog. If any troll should glance from a rectangular aperture, they will note only his air of well offended dignity and no trace of the creeping anxiety Karkat has no reason to feel and thus is not, in fact, feeling. His sickle is out and readied because _sickles are awesome_ , that's why.

When he reaches his hive, Karkat swings the door shut and sets the lock behind him. He pauses a moment to catch his breath, and _then_ he notices. Everything is wrong. The inside air cloys with the tang of spilled blood, with what Karkat thinks for a long confused moment is his _own_ blood, but no. His skin is intact.

His entertainment screening board is knocked into the walking path, and his reclining surface has deep gashes, weeping brown. And Karkat has seen _A Throwaway Character Accepts A Voice Communication Notification Which She Assumes Is From Her Nascent Kismesis But The Caller Is In Fact A Young Indigo Blood Who Happens To Be Currently Located Within The Initial Character's Own Hive (etc.)_ even if he squinted through the goriest bits. He's not going further in.

Maybe the half a hoofbeast wasn't as dead as Karkat thought, or maybe another sort of monster got in and attacked Karkat's lusus. Karkat will exit the hive, not to _run away_ but to sneak around the outside and...

He hears a crack of bone plate from behind the next wall, in the food preparation block. The scent of too familiar blood redoubles through the air, and nothing shrieks or skrees or crashes or reacts at all...

And make sure his lusus is okay.

That's what he's going to do.

Karkat pushes at the door. It remains shut. Which makes no sense. Karkat didn't lock it against himself.

There's a noise behind him, the decisive click of a footstep too sharp and too light to be his lusus. Karkat spins around, slamming his back against the solid door. His heel grinds into the flora strips, fallen and forgotten on the ground, and the aroma of blood is underlaid with spice-stink. Both sickle handles press textured grooves against Karkat's fingertips and...

There is no _and_. No next thing to do. There is an adult leaning a casual shoulder into the door gash to his food preparation block, and it is the same adult who had held him captive perigees ago, and this is too precisely a scene from an entire selection of recent day terrors for Karkat to do anything more useful than freezing and staring blankly. His thinkpan can't make any inroads to processing this as _reality_ , instead of its cue to wake up. Wake up right fucking now.

The adult's hair is a couple perigees of growth longer and she's wearing off-duty clothes with the dizzyingly busy, sign-themed patterns that pass as adult fashion. But Karkat isn't about to forget the abrupt orange curve of her horns.

Her eyes rake over him, and despite his heavy shirt Karkat feels fully exposed by her stare. This really _is_ a nightmare. One where he's stepping in front of his inexplicably gathered friends, and when he follows their disgusted, mocking expressions it turns out he'd forgotten to wear clothes. The unimpressive whole of him is on display.

Or worse, he's arrived appropriately pre-wrapped in fabric, but the skin of his chest has broken open without his notice and his blood is seeping through his shirt, staining his sign to pure, brilliant, vibrant, mutant red.

The angled lines of the adult's lips pull up around her fangs. Karkat's clothes continue to follow the physical rules of the universe, but she could peel him layer by layer and know what she'll find all the way through.

Run for the stairs. The door to outside won't open. Karkat will have to run for the stairs like the first culled brown blood in every horror film.

Run, but if he moves she's faster than him. Run, but the adult's hand rests at her thigh in a fist that is loose, open, like she's holding the edge of a line Karkat can't see and if he twitches she will throw it over him. He won't make it up the stairs, but it's that or standing here and _letting_ her take him. He has to try.

The adult must have noticed the tensing of his muscles. She pushes herself away from the edge of the door support, exposing her lower arm from behind the wall. She shifts her balance to her opposite heel and tosses the contents of her hand into a lazy, sideways spin.

And... Karkat knew. He's not such an entirely braindead nub thumper he can't add together one or two subtle situational clues and... he _knew_. But Karkat watches his lusus's unattached head bounce off the toppled entertainment board in a splatter of bright red droplets and skid to a messy stop in the center of the room, and Karkat's horror snaps into fury. Instead of launching himself for the stairs he leaps out _towards_ the adult.

As soon as his shoulders are away from the solid backing of the door, Karkat realizes that he picked the most impossibly terrible of available choices, but it’s too late to change direction. One sickle is extended to the side in his outstretched arm and the other is readied near his chest, and Karkat is screaming. He jumps over a pile of noise extruding boxes and hooks his sickles towards her.

The adult shrugs into his advance. She meets the curve of his weapon with a toothpick glimmer of silver held between her claws.

Karkat’s blade is torn from his fingers. It clunks off the side of a far away movie organizer, and the adult angles her wrist into a downswing, catches his second sickle.

She raises her other arm in time with his flailing momentum, and in the next moment Karkat is sprawled on the floor with his shoulder jammed into the corner of the wall. He tries to push himself up, away, _anything_. He can’t. His wrists are wrapped together under his back. The adult looks down at him with amused green eyes, and Karkat is frozen. It's like the last half-sweep of his life has been a not especially vivid piece of wishful imagining, like he is still trapped that same day in the cave, like some part of his thinkpan never escaped.

The adult is spinning Karkat’s last sickle around her tiny blade, and the high pitched squealing of metal on metal loops on repeat. The weight distribution is all wrong, heavy handle and razor thin tip, but the adult compensates with quick, practiced jerks of her wrist. It’s halfway a juggling trick, halfway a _blasphemy_ , with Karkat playing the traditional role of captive audience.

The adult spends a few more seconds toying with Karkat’s chosen and maintained and _deadliest_ weapon. Around, around, around... Then she flicks her fingers and the sickle flies loose. It stabs point-first into an opposite wall, wobbles, vibrates, and stills.

She twists her wrist to show Karkat the tool she used to disarm him. It's the approximate length and diameter of a sewing needle. It blinks away, but Karkat doesn't know where. Would a sewing needle even fit in a knifekind specibus? Why would anyone ever try. It would be less humiliating if she'd taken him down so easily with nothing in her hands.

"I brought something for you. A bit of morning reading material," the adult says, and pulls a tablet device from the air. "Where you personally were the inspiration." She closes the last step between her and Karkat and this _isn't_ the cave, all those perigees ago. He can't lie around and hope for the chance to escape back to his hive, because the adult has found his hive. He has no safe place left. There's only one way he's getting out this time.

The adult is wearing emerald-outlined strips gathered like a skirt over her leggings. It's flashy and _stupid_ for fighting, and when she closes in Karkat launches up and bites into the fabric, twists his entire body for the force to take her off balance. But the material rips cleanly under his teeth, offering no resistance, and he falls to the side.

The adult doesn't let him hit the ground. She pulls up on the lead from the psychic rope tying his arms away and lifts him to his knees.

"Fuck you, you enormous sack of bleatbeast assholes!" he screams at her. He's not _cooperating_. He's breaking her rules, that list of ways to earn his continued existence, and his voice is almost steady. "Get your fungus infested claws off me!"

"See, this is what I appreciate about you," the adult says. "You know the right things to be afraid of." Karkat fights to pull away, and her smirk sets deeper in her face, like she's thrilled at his invitation to torture him to death.

Please, god.

Please let her torture him to _death._

"Clever wiggler like you, you're literate, right?" She shakes the tablet in front of Karkat's face, and Karkat lunges teeth first at the gray hand holding it.

She loops her hand over his head, invisible rope catching on his horns, and yanks him back. The world goes wobbly. The adult crouches down and reaches her arm around him. She's too close. Her jacket blocks off half his vision with repeated double arcs in various ugly proportions. Her arm rustles the fabric of his shirt.

Karkat arcs and bends his torso, struggling to throw her off even though he has no chance of it, even though the pressure of the invisible rope around his horns flares when he pulls against it. The adult calmly attaches the new loop to the knot on his arms, locking his head back. His chin is tilted up, exposing the underside of his throat. She breathes in, and she's so close that air moves over the skin beneath his jaw. She doesn't back away.

"You know, I was worried," she says to Karkat. Confides. Her knotwork is finished, and she pushes him backwards into the wall. Her fingers drift to the side, tracing the shape of his back, pressing into the curve of his hip. "I got you halfway broken in the first time. Thought maybe you'd make this _boring_."

"If you need excitement, I have a list of sharp implements you can _go fuck yourself with_ ," Karkat spits at the ceiling, and when the adult laughs he growls at her, as low and vicious as he can. The adult considers his threat. She puts the tablet away and lays her palm across Karkat's throat, muffling but not stopping the vibration. Although she could. Her nails dig under his jaw, but she neglects to tear out his neck.

If he’s displaying his fury, it’s because she’s allowing him. The adult isn’t upset by his defiance, she’s amused. Karkat’s noise box isn’t developed enough yet for the sounds he’s trying to force through it, and each second he maintains the growl his throat feels more stretched and scratchy, and he’s not accomplishing anything but entertaining her.

Eventually Karkat goes silent. The skin of his neck is cooling under her fingers, and he can't twist away without her projected rope pulling on his horns. She has him. She won't even let him fall. It's hard to remember how to be angry, and not just scared and tired.

Partway hidden behind the adult’s elbow, Karkat’s lusus watches with blank, upside down eyes. No one is going to come for Karkat this time. There’s no one left to help him. Rescue him. Put him out of his misery.

The adult glances over her shoulder, following his stare. She says, "Yeah, it was almost inspiring how hard that thing fought for you. Like it actually _cared_ , as much as it could with the six brain cells in its oversized cranium. You should feel honored."

When she looks back she’s grinning, fangs sharp and too close to Karkat’s face. And he notices for the first time that, no, she’s not unmarred. There’s a green line dripping under her eye, and one sleeve of her jacket is ripped shoulder to elbow. Her hair is battle-wild but uneven, like something ripped away a chunk of it.

It should hurt less, knowing that his lusus went down fighting. But it went down fighting for _him_. For _nothing_. What could any single lusus hope to do against an adult troll?

More than Karkat, at least.

The adult presses her thumb under Karkat’s eye and smears a jagged line through the wetness of too-bright tears seeping over his cheek. "Don't fucking touch me," Karkat says. He’s breathing too fast, and the words are shallow and broken.

The adult laughs, light and _honest_ , like Karkat's just repeated her favorite joke. But she does take her hand away, even though she pauses to flick him once in the forehead. Her fingers are damp, covered in a slick, bright red that has nothing to do with his tears.

"Alright, so what do you want to do instead? Hey, how about some schoolfeeding, if I've got your _permission_." Her eyes gleam. That was Karkat's cue to chuckle.

The tablet is back in his face. Karkat rolls his eyes all the way to the side, focusing on a bleary view of a wall. There's an arc of bright red droplets across it.

"No?" says the adult. "Well, maybe you know this already. How current are you on news of interest to the mutant scum on the bottom of the gene pool?"

And even now Karkat shudders at the word _mutant_ but, "Yes," he snarls. "Stamping that keyword into my subscription service. That sounds like a really amazing way to _not_ get myself flagged for a visit from a skew-happy bulgemunch with a culling fork, just to be sure."

"You’re so considerate," the adult says, "keeping yourself safe like that, until I had a chance to come back."

There's a prickling on Karkat's scalp as the adult brings her fingers down into his hair. Karkat thinks she's going to drag his face over so that there's no option to look away from her tablet, but she seems content to have her hand wander over his skull. She picks at the seam between psychic rope and skin and horn and when Karkat growls at her again she pulls the rope tighter, forcing him to lean backwards. Her thigh knocks into his side, holding him in front of her.

The adult taps her reading device playfully, not even hard enough to disorient, at the top of Karkat’s pulled-back horn. "Not that I blame you for a lack of civic interest, especially at this level of extorted bureaucratic spew," she says. Her fingers wander inch by inch over his neck, as though measuring the exposed flesh.

"Some tacked on addendum to a clutch of rules on fleet maintenance." When she reaches the collar of his shirt, her fingers lift from his skin, but Karkat can still feel the pressure of her hand against fabric. Sliding downward. "Everyone understands what a troll is, right, so who'd even notice a couple extra guidelines on what a troll's _not_. Like, how about anything not on the hemospectrum, that makes a good start."

Karkat's eyes flick to the tablet. A swarm of meaningless legal phrases above the uncaring scrawl of a seadweller's sign.

"What," Karkat says.

"Yeah, see, there’s this senior legislacerator who owed me a favor," the adult says. Her mouth is inches from his face, and Karkat can’t help flinching every time her fangs move to frame words. Tiny bits of saliva bounce from her tongue, scattering below Karkat’s eyes, and her smile is thick and smug. Her wandering nails prick through the fabric of Karkat's shirt, just under his sign.

"And no one else on committee was going to waste time arguing about the standard legal codification of shit we all know bone deep as truth. The learn- _ed_ met were too busy spilling blood over ceiling heights. What, like the Empress is going to stop down to the slime distillation chambers?"

Karkat's chest is too tight. He's not breathing. His body has been hollowed out and his organs replaced by white fire. His thinkpan pounds inside his skull, and the adult might as well have yanked out one of his horns. He can't think. He doesn't _want_ to think. As soon as his pan starts working again, he's going to understand the _point_ of the sentences she's shoving through his ears.

"So what does that make the leftovers. Not people, and not subjugated races. Not aliens. Not slaves. Fuck if I know, but whatever it is, it's something subject to the ancient doctrine of _finders keepers_."

The adult reaches the bottom of his shirt, but instead of continuing to drag her hand over his pants, she twists her arm and reaches directly into his waistband. Which isn't a _surprise_ , but Karkat panics anyway, growling at her and squirming as if there were any way to kick her off him.

There's not. With his balance fucked up and her body so close to him, Karkat only manages to grind his own seedflap into her claws. His growl is broken with whimpers.

"Something I can carry anywhere I want, and never have to worry about waking up one night with a _troll_ as a captive."

The flat of her palm grinds into his bulge, slow and too lightly to be _good_ , and it's too hard to see around her to place himself. To remember, each second, where and when he is. He's confused when his hands hit flat wallspace, and not the rough texture of stone.

Karkat can't reach her, but he gnashes his teeth through the air between them. "I'm going to fucking kill you! I'm going to rip apart your abdomen and choke you with your own digestive coils! I'm going to yank out the bloated, moldy maggot corpses buried in your skullsockets and shove them up your tumor collapsed nook, and then I'm going to jam your head into my load gaper until your thinkpan is dissolved in with my shit, with apologies _to my shit_ for the introduction!"

"No, you're not," says the adult, amused. Her hand is splayed over his ass, and she squeezes it, claws bunching around one cheek. Her thumbnail catches at the inner edge of his nook. It's a sharp point just barely inside him, and Karkat screams and thrashes. The psychic rope pulls at his horns, flaring pain, and he's _grateful_ for the distraction.

"Let’s not start off bullshitting each other," the adult says. "You’re never going to do anything but what I want you to, ever again."

She's going to keep him. It's no surprise. How can it be. The adult would never have come all the way planet-side for him with any intention less final. But she's changed the rules. He can't pretend that there's still a way to goad the adult into disposing of him, or that she's giving him anything to fight against.

And she won't stop _touching_ him. Maybe she'll never stop. Her thumbnail tracing his nook, and her forearm thick along the side of his bulge, and her body so oppressively near, blocking him against the wall. Closing his universe to a patch of floor too narrow to fit himself completely into. The texture of her jacket grates on Karkat's shirt when she leans in, and all Karkat can smell is her sweat and her breath. The blood of his lusus on her hands.

The world swims in blurry pink and the air is thick in his throat. Karkat forces it out with hitching sobs. The adult makes a low humming noise. She says, "Sure, go ahead if you want to scream and cry for a bit." She tosses her tablet to land in a careless clunk on the ground, and then prods her finger at the side of Karkat's eye, smearing the escaping tear across his cheek.

"Get some practice in."

Karkat tries to clamp down on the burn of emotion in his chest. The pressure behind his eyes. But when he blinks there's a warm rush of liquid from between his eyelids. His following high pitched growl of a whine is just anger at himself.

There's nothing left but giving into her, but Karkat does it so fucking _readily_. He couldn't hold back the tears if trying meant his destruction.

Claws scratch on the front of his scalp, sharp points, mates to the ones that are gripping the globe of his ass and digging right now into the inner border of his nook. Karkat jerks away from the touch, and the psychic rope pulls at his horns, confusing his senses. The feel of adult's claws is amplified in a jolt, as if they stab through him and meet in his center. Karkat sobs harder. He's breathing too fast, dragging in more oxygen before he remembers to cough some out first.

Then the claws drift back against his forehead. The adult is brushing his bangs to the side from his face, tender as a concerned moirail. "It's okay, kid," she says. "I know. You've got a lot to be upset about, even just this far."

Which is ominous as the first rays of daybreak molesting his exposed bulge. Karkat should be more frightened and desperate. More _furious_. But her supporting hand doesn't slide any higher inside him, and her other fingers tuck a section of Karkat's hair behind his ear. Gently.

She's looking at him with that hungry, considering expression that always ends in him screaming... but that's it. There's no disgust at the mutant bright tears running too hot over his cheeks and pooling under the collar of his shirt.

Karkat knows she's only _allowing_ this display because it amuses her somehow, but it feels suddenly like a mercy, like the greatest act of pity anyone's ever shown him. He can't hide what he is from her, but he doesn't _need_ to. The adult has already seen everything wrong and weak about him, and she returned for him anyway.

When Karkat slumps, into the wall, into her hands, the adult moves her fingers and pushes the psychic loop over his horns. His head stretches back, his throat unprotected and inches below the adult's fangs, and then the rope falls free behind him. The circle binding his wrists had seemed solid when he fought it, but now now it yanks loose and slides away after the wider loop.

Karkat puts together a nebulous fantasy of his claws swiping across the adult's ugly smirk, adding more green lines under his lusus's impotent attempts. He doesn't try. He doesn't even move his hands from behind his back. If he can't fend her off or protect himself by putting them in her way, what is the fucking point of them.

Karkat's eyes roll down, away from her, but the adult doesn't yank him back. His attention catches on the corner of her tablet, which is strewn on the floor alongside a piece of reclining surface padding splattered in brown and bright red.

He can't make out individual words from his position, but Karkat's gaze skitters anyway over the screen like a skimbug bouncing low over an electrified puddle, unable to find a landing point that doesn't burn through. Karkat still hasn't actually read whatever sentences the adult got her friendly neighborhood law-makeradicator to doodle under something _official_ , and the thought of filling that lack in his pan makes his entire torso seize in panic.

As long as Karkat hasn't fully considered the evidence, it could be false. Lies, even though...

 _Let’s not start off bullshitting each other_.

The corner of the tablet has smeared through a drop of vivid red that used to be hidden inside Karkat's custodian, the only thing on Alternia that ever would have protected him. And it's gone. If Karkat tilts his head towards the adult's shoulder, he would see the bright painted edge of his lusus's rendered neck. _Gone_ , but there's no place in Karkat's mind the right shape for comprehending. It's gone. It's over. Everything.

And from the floor, the glow of text negates his existence, transforming him by indifferent decree from a mutant, a potential hemocriminal, into literally _nothing_. His existence is no longer worth even the effort of a cull notice.

Karkat's always known he would eventually be destroyed as defective, but as a defective troll. As a _threat_ to the purity of the race and the neat spectrum of society. He'd never accepted it, not really, but he'd understood. To lose even that shitty fate...

And the document itself matters so little that the adult tossed it away rather than use up the room in her sylladex.

Karkat promises himself that it doesn't matter, he _is_ a troll. Still juvenile, obviously, but whatever shade of purple is stamped under an update of fleet operating standards can't change that.

It's been handed to him fairly fucking nicely that the adult isn't using the same rules from back in the cave, but Karkat takes a few careful breaths and then equally carefully moves his head so he can exactly meet the adult's gaze.

She doesn't say anything. Her eyebrows raise into an exaggeration of generous patience, but she waits for him to compose himself. Or at least to stop gasping with sobs. The adult's expression is steady. She might be genuinely interested in what he's going to do.

As a preface, Karkat says, "You are an aficionado of rotbeast frottage who has shoved so many larvae up the puckered fissure of your digestion chute they've chewed into your sponge, upgrading it to a maggot rumpus shithive."

The adult doesn't take offense, doesn't _hurt_ him for it, doesn't stop winding a lock of his hair between her finger and thumb. Karkat's extremely aware of her hand poking underneath him, but it's not like that's news.

"And _I_ am a troll," Karkat says. "I know what I fucking am." At the end, his voice cracks, more uncertain than he needs it to be.

And here the adult laughs. This is probably the last thing Karkat will get to say that _matters_ , and the only result is her amusement.

 _Good_ , whispers a quiet, traitorous piece of Karkat's brain. He can't stop whatever the adult is going to do to him, but it'll be worse if he doesn't keep her pleased.

The adult tightens her fingers through Karkat's hair, so he can't look away from her face. This is the angle he'd personally chosen, to get her attention, but he's forced to hold it now that she wants _his_.

He'd remembered right. Or the adult is just mocking his attempt at playing along before he knows what the game actually is. He'll find out which. Eventually.

"You sure on that one, kid?" she says. "Cause you're naive as wormshit if you think I can't get you convinced you're a grubsauce coated doughsplotch with a hole in it before I have you a week."

She's still grinning at him like she's hungry and Karkat is the promise of dinner or maybe, if she's craving a doughsplotch, _dessert_. And Karkat knows that she's telling the truth, would believe her even if she hadn't said she wouldn't resort to lying. He's always known he's a shitty figure of a troll, small and blunt and missing that essential panspark that lets other people face the night without being certain something awful is always just on the verge of happening. Like he's expecting, with every moment, the entire universe to come crashing in around him.

He can stop worrying, then. It turns out he was _right_.

A week to shatter his identity entirely, and that's a high estimate, only dragged out because the adult would enjoy the process too much for efficiency. Her tongue darts out, thick and black, so close he can smell the saliva clinging to it, and slides over the tips of her longest fangs. They glisten wetly, and she snickers at Karkat's expression.

"Here's a piece of advice I really thought you'd figure out faster than this. You should be extremely fucking careful about what shit comes out of your mouth that sounds like it's maybe a challenge." Her hand twists tighter around his hair, and her nail points burrow into his scalp. "You understand me, yeah?"

Karkat doesn't trust himself with the _Yes_. He nods instead, fighting to pull his hair through her fist. And then he can't stop nodding. The movement spreads down through his shoulders, torso, hips until Karkat's full body is shuddering.

The adult moves her grip on his ass to keep him from listing over. She scratches thin lines to the top point of his thigh and digs in hard, and her thumbnail leaves his nook. Karkat should feel relief, but he doesn't. He knows it will be back.

He can't see. He's crying too much again. Karkat squeezes his eyelids together to force out the excess tears.

"Hey, don't look like that," the adult says. "I haven't even decided how thoroughly I'm going to break you, yet." She tugs a few times on his hair, and Karkat winces into himself before realizing what she's asking for. When opens his eyes to her, she smooths the tuft of hair, tucking it in next to his horn. She's smiling like they're having an excellent conversation on a topic Karkat gives three fucks about. Maybe he should. But how can it make any difference.

"It's no fun to take it too far," she says. "Like, there was this other freak I found, a couple weeks after the mutant issue got, you know. Revisited." She knocks her head to the side, towards the discarded tablet, in case Karkat needed a reminder on how that turned out.

"Blood so dark you could barely make out the indigo. Big for a kid and strong like highbloods get sometimes, but she lasted maybe three hours before she was all used up. Nothing left to care what happened to her."

 _What happened to her_ , Karkat asks, almost. The words rise in his throat like a mass of phoneme vomit, but there's a narrow edge to the adult's grin and Karkat already knows too much of the answer. She'd gotten _boring_.

God, how many other kids has the adult destroyed like this. Smashed into their component pieces, unravelled in slow motion and forced to watch.

Maybe it's a good thing that it will only be Karkat now, over and over forever until he's useless to her. Better than picking off kids who haven't been ruined yet, right? Who still have some chance of a future. And if the adult is really going to _keep_ him, then this is the closest thing to a future Karkat's ever had.

No. No, what the fuck, _no_.

Who it _should_ be is the freak indigo, and her ghoul can jam an electrified prodding device through its ectoplasmic bulge because it would be, if she wasn't such a pathetic _plaything_.

It should be anyone else except Karkat. Karkat's paid his turn. He won, he survived. It's supposed to be over for him. That's his prize.

If the adult wants to carry off a troll kid as a souvenir, Karkat would give her first pick of every damaged idiot in his personal weirdo menagerie. Another green blood, since after all she likes the _taste_. Or a cackling maniac who'd figure out enough of the adult's rot sponged mindgames to play her role better than Karkat ever will, or an asshole who wears his mutation on the _outside_ of his head. Or if the adult would like a more proper indigo, Karkat knows one who'd be too drugged up to realize what was happening until she'd dragged him halfway across the Empire, and anything that happens after is too late.

Karkat would trade anyone over to this, would turn his back on their betrayed screaming and run. He knows it under his bones.

Then thank fuck none of them is here.

No one except Karkat and the adult who returned for him, and _that_ makes no fucking sense because...

"You killed me," Karkat says. His voice is a sobbed out rasp. "You left me for _ash_." It's not a question. It's a notification to the universe that the laws of cause and effect have broken down, someone should yank the wrench from their flap and go check that out.

"Nah." The adult lifts her hand from his hair and flicks him in the horn. The sharp ping of it echoes over his skull. It's unpleasant, but not painful. Quite. Karkat tries to swallow down the hope that this means maybe, since she's not going to kill him. Maybe this time she'll be _kind_. "You had enough ways out if you wanted to live badly enough, and you _did_. Never met anyone who wanted something so much, who had so little chance of getting it. I crack up every time I think about you."

"Most kids, they're just biomass that hasn't been recycled yet," the adult says. She's grinning to herself, thinking of the mutant indigo, or Ladaci, or the entire parade of juvenile trolls she personally culled, but her words are nothing but fact. No one _expects_ to make it, and everything else is bluster. "I want something that'll last."

She flicks him again. "So let me warn you, you better be worth the backtracking. You would not fucking _believe_ the the shit I got into, looking up those goofy gray squiggles."

It takes Karkat a few moments to realize the adult is talking about his sign. She remembered it from all those seasons ago. She traced it. Finding him was a _plan_ , but Karkat doesn't understand. "Why?" he says. "Why _me_?"

The adult brings her hand to Karkat's mid-chest with the force of a punch. The blow folds him into the wall and forces the air from his breathing organ. Her claws close around his sign, careless of ripping the fabric or the flesh beneath it, and she yanks him close. There's a long seam from Karkat's chest to his knee where the shape of her body presses on him.

Karkat is wide eyed and gasping as he finds her gaze again, terrified of not appeasing her, and the adult says, "Haven't you heard the good news, kid? You're _special_."

She's smiling sharp and victorious, two rows of open fangs an inch from his eye. She laughs, and Karkat flinches away from her breath on his face.

And Karkat...

Says...

"No," Karkat says. "No, this is wrong."

"This never fucking happened."

\-------------------------------------------------

"No," Karkat says. "No, this is wrong."

His hands are raised in front of him, not trapped behind, and the surface they are pressed to is transparent and silica smooth. The adult is kneeling on one leg in the ground level entertainment block of his hive, leering over Karkat like he's just another piece of furniture for her to entertain herself by ripping apart, but Karkat is watching the scene from the outside. His feet rest on the lawnring that once abutted his home, and he's safely blocked off on the opposite side of a rectangular aperture.

Karkat lifts his fingertips, and they come away.

"This never fucking happened."

"Not to you," says the ghost of the troll beside him.

The words are too loud in Karkat's ears, like she's so close her voice rattles the base of his horns. Cool air touches the back of his neck like whispered breath, but when he turns to her, teeth exposed in a snarl, she's standing an acceptable distance away. And Karkat's not certain the dead actually breathe.

The ghost is smiling at him. It's a soft, gentled expression, and it doesn't shift at all. The edges of her lips and eyes are crinkled upwards at matching angles, as if she had once overheard the definition of 'beatific' and immediately spent three weeks in front a mirror.

Though the blank pools of white where her glance nuggets should be ruin the effect, presuming she is not in fact going for "soul crawlingly creeptastic".

Around those twin bright pools of nothing are the wire frames of glasses. Clear, but their shape is a copy of Terezi's pair. They're pointed at the outside edges like sharp, even horns, a contrast to the asymmetrical mess jutting from the top of this strange troll's head. The first time he'd seen her, Karkat thought paradox space had dumped him in with a particularly far fetched Vriska alternate before she opened her gabhole.

"Who the fuck else is there," Karkat demands.

The ghost's blue lipstick smile twitches around her fangs, and her eyes widen in anticipation, and Karkat stumbles a reflexive step backwards. His shoulder hits the window which he does not turn to look through, ignoring the movement in his peripheral vision, and then he recognizes the expression.

This is Rose Lalonde in the asteroid's nutrition block, behind all the translucent alien folds of her skin, when the over-extension of Karkat's latest metaphor edges too close to her Sgrub gifted field of expertise. _You bring up a very interesting point_ , she'll say, jumping after the excuse to answer at _length_ , and Karkat should have backed up a hell of a lot further.

"No one," the ghost agrees, "but unless someone is an accomplished Hero of Light, such as myself, it's hard for most people to see it from that perspective. Even if we leave aside the question of alternate possibilities, you personally try to isolate your identity from your own, direct timeline's past and future."

"I can understand why you would want to amputate them, or to whittle your reality down until it only encompasses the present moment, especially if it is a safe one that is untouched by the horrors you have experienced, or those you are likely still to face."

"But it seems to me that this can't be a very satisfying existence. When you deny yourself that continuity, you deny yourself the ability to truly learn from the experiences of your previous self, or to access his perspective at all except through the means of antagonistic chat client paradoxes. And without you - that is, the present you, the you I am talking to - working to integrate all aspects of yourself, you'll never achieve equanimity. In the future you can't help but to be as lost and hindered as you are now."

Karkat's back is to the wall of his hive. Everything else is moonless night, but if he doesn't focus on the far away points of stars they start to blur in front of him. He can feel the prick of claws though his shirt but _never happened_.

"Good," Karkat says. "That asshole _deserves_ it. He doesn't appreciate the shit I put up with so he doesn't have to."

The ghost pauses her babbling to look at Karkat with exquisitely practised sorrow. In the silence, Karkat can hear the night breeze rustling through his hair, exactly the way he remembers, but nothing of what's happening on the other side of his hive wall. And apparently the adult can't hear _his_ conversation, can't see him through the transparent window.

Unless she just doesn't care, entertained enough by the young troll she already has in her grip.

"Is that who he is?" Karkat says towards an empty point on the horizon. "Some poor asshole from an offshoot timeline who gets trapped in that shit forever?!" His voice cracks at the end of the sentence. _Never happened_ but what _did_ happen is too ready to jump forward in his mind, memories of precisely what it felt like to know that this was the end, he'd forfeited the rest of his life to something he couldn't dream of fighting or persuading. Something that didn't even want him dead, not as much as it wanted him screaming.

The sky blurs again, and Karkat thinks he must be crying until he realizes it's not fading to pink but gray. The far away sparkle of stars shatter into crystalline debris and...

The ghost stomps her foot sharply. Karkat's view solidifies into the dark night sky, and the wall behind his shoulders instantly smooths. He hadn't realized it was changing.

 _Fuck_ dream bubbles. And fuck this lobotomized Vriska deathclone for dragging him into _this_ one.

"No, not forever." And she's still smiling at him, calmly, helpfully even. From her vantage, she has an excellent view of the scene playing itself out in Karkat's hive, but she doesn't rate it of concern. Her expression radiates beneficent contentment, except for the empty eyes. "This is a remnant of an offshoot timeline. After it diverged from the alpha branch, it wouldn't have lasted very long. Relatively speaking."

"My fucking mistake. So that idiot in there, he didn't have to deal with this _forever_ , just until she finally got fed up and killed him or until reality imploded, whichever came first."

"Yes, that's right. The pressure on a doomed timeline---"

"Holy shit. Eject yourself into a floating snot pustule where somebody cares." There's a movement at the side of his eye, and it could be the harmless shifting of shadows, if shadows were patterned with emerald green. "Hey, I have a better topic for discussion. What sort of wiggler stomping, seedflap grating sadist _are_ you to bring me here?"

"Isn't this what you wanted to know?"

"What?! How does that--"

"If she _meant_ it," says the ghost. Her voice is still calm, but she raises it to talk over Karkat. Apparently he has not yet allowed her a fair talking to clamping down her flaphole ratio in this exchange.

Her words itch under his horns, and Karkat reminds himself to _continue_ reminding himself to be wary of her. Her eyes are erased but she's wrapped in cerulean blue, and Vriska had her own tricks when she wanted you to pay attention to her. Ie, every single moment.

The ghost's lips tighten in the middle, pulling between her fangs. "I don't think it will be helpful to discuss the interesting matrix of personality flaws one could ascribe to Over-Lieutenant Zhaleya Arvak. Certainly not at this point. But she was the first troll, since you climbed onto Alternia's surface, who saw what you carry under your skin and didn't immediately attempt your culling. In fact, she claimed to like you."

"Am I wrong that you have been wondering, all these perigees, if she was telling the truth?"

Karkat's hands are clenched into fists by his sides, and his chest shakes with the effort to draw in enough air not to collapse. As if the imaginary substance passing through the meat flaps of his meal cavity must carry any oxygen at all. He looks up into the soothing blackness of the night, and he's sure that it's only the ghost's influence that stops the view from shifting to the towering amusement of green eyes.

"Absolutely. That is precisely the fucking question I invite to skip daintily across my ponder lobes during the pants squirdling finale of my most cherished bright-afternoon terrors," Karkat says.

The ghost acknowledges him with a small, stiff nod. "That as well. It can't be an easy question to carry." She doesn't have pupils, but Karkat is aware of her attention shifting from him to the dream echo winding itself out behind his shoulders. Whatever is happening through the window, it earns only a soft, fond smile.

"This memory offers us only one answer, among many. But I believe it is a particularly relevant one, if your goal is to find the level of closure that will allow healing."

"In this timeline, several key events did not occur, preventing the commencement of your game session. Meanwhile, a thousand lightsweeps from your home planet, Lieutenant Arvak responded to the death of a close friend and ally in a minor border skirmish by single-handedly imbibing, over a period of three days, a significant percentage of her station's holdings of intoxicants."

"By the time she recovered, her bodycount included a new bronze-blooded conscript and five alien prisoners. She had also used up three important favours, and she had recompiled a rough catalogue of her goals in life. That is, which things she would like accomplish or to obtain."

The ghost is smiling vaguely into the distance, like she's reading off a poster stamped with the title of the worst movie in paradox space. There's an edge of interest to her tone. If it is a movie, it's one with exciting preview clips. "Among them, well. She remembered how much she enjoyed having you-"

"Oh god no. Stop fucking talking." Karkat's throat is seizing, and if this was actually the body he'd used to eat dinner instead of a flimsy stand in model, he's sure his grubsauce covered noodle meats would be making a special bonus reappearance over his shoes.

"I'm sorry," says the ghost, and Karkat lifts his head to sneer at her, but she really does look regretful. As much as she can without proper eyes. She starts to take a step towards him, but Karkat bares his teeth in warning and she settles back on her heels.

Her shoulders twitch. She might be _flustered_ , her centuries-practised composure fraying against Karkat's refusal to cooperate. He feels a pang of gratification, prideful and tinged black.

The ghost brings her hand to the pendant which Karkat is _not going to ask her about_. Who knows why the dead from even his own version of reality do anything. Her palm closes around a small knockoff of Karkat's sign, eclipsing it from his view. As if it were _hers_ to keep. As if she had a claim, a _right_ to it. Her orange nails fold in behind her fist just how, beyond the window, the adult had twisted her claws into the gray fabric on an elsewhile Karkat's shirt, and...

The ghost lets go with a suddenness, as if the silver metal had burned her or, likelier, as if she was having trouble amusing herself with only the thoughts in her own head. And it would be so easy to use that against him, but the ghost frowns sorrowfully at Karkat and says, "I'm not choosing my words very well."

"Or here's a panflash," Karkat says. "Why don't you choose to shut the fuck up! Who gives a limp fingered bulgesqueeze about her career path or what her name is or if her lusus diddled her as a pupa. There was an _adult_ , and I _got her attention_. What else is there that fucking matters!"

"A great deal." The ghost smiles, unflustered again, back to calm and bland and still. "When you observe reality from the perspective of a Light player, you see that almost everything matters. Even the smallest, most whimsically acquired item or off-hand remark may be the difference between a failed or useful timeline."

"But for now, perhaps it would be simplest to focus on the particular detail that we came here to witness. It may help you to know that Lieu... that the adult troll who hurt you... she truly did wish to keep you as a... companion." She hesitates over the last word, finally settling on a euphemism instead of something more accurate, like 'slave' or 'fucktoy.'

As the ghost talks, a heavy and twisting emotion grows in Karkat's chest, too thick to parse. She's telling him that he would have been trapped forever, defeated, tortured, _used_. By an adult.

By an _adult_. A successful soldier, strong and vicious and stamped with a green sign. The adult had tested him to every limit, and she'd judged him to have value, even if just for her sick idea of entertainment. She'd _wanted_ him, and let the pained, terrified screaming of the kid in Karkat's hive be presented as objective proof.

Something hard stabs into his palms, and Karkat jerks and throws them in front of him before realizing it's just his claws, rolled too tight into fists. He hisses, "Is that supposed to be _comforting_?"

"In a way," the ghost says. "Although it may only become apparent much further into the healing process. I know this scenario must be hard for you to face, but it would be much more difficult to find closure for past events without understanding the full truth of them."

Her smile doesn't twitch, and it's still a strange frame around her familiar fangs. Vriska's attempts at sympathetic expressions ranged from bewilderment to constipation, but then Vriska was never locked away for a century with nothing to do but practice making faces. And the ghost's movements are all too stiff, limbs pulled as if by outside strings rather than the fluidity of tendons.

In one sense she's young, not more than a sweep or two older than Karkat. But she's obviously been stuck in this afterlife for a very long time.

The ghost seems to realize that she's unnerving him. She blinks at Karkat for the first time, with careful, deliberate effort, and she gets it so _almost_ right that Karkat shudders.

He turns towards the window. He can't see the adult's face right now, but he can tell from the way her neck and shoulders move that she's talking. The adult's hand is at the other Karkat's temple, and she drifts it slowly upwards.

If Karkat doesn't focus, doesn't keep reminding himself which side of the glass he's standing on, with his shoes on the outside lawnring and the night's breeze touching his skin, the other's memory starts to bleed into his own awareness. He can't entirely shake the pressure of fingertips moving above his eyebrow.

Maybe the ghost is right, and they're the same person after all, sharing one soul and one scalp.

The adult's nails lift his fringe as they slide gently into his hair, and she's still the only one who has ever touched him like this. Karkat had papped Gamzee's scraggly claws away when he tried.

They had paused there, with Karkat's blunt fingers raised against Gamzee's long, knobby ones. Karkat stared at their hands in a blank and confused distress, unable to name what his fucking problem was.

Gamzee had. Not frowned. He has too many fangs to be very good at frowning. But he'd looked at Karkat for a while, and there had been a series of old fears that spiked new and fresh in Karkat's mind, as though someone was picking curiously at the scabs on the inside of his thinkpan. Karkat held his breath to keep from complaining and waited it though, because you don't deny your moirail full knowledge of you. You _don't._ And you _really_ don't do it twice in the same minute. Not if the serendipity is true.

Then the sensation passed, and Gamzee entwined his hand through Karkat's, grip secure as if that's all Gamzee had wanted from him. They sat in a dark asteroid corner and spun out together into the void.

"So she's dead, right?" Karkat says. "I mean, not her, but the spew-blooded freakshow from _my_ timeline. The alpha bitch, I guess."

"I haven't personally witnessed her death." The ghost's voice rings loud behind him, and Karkat has the sensation that her voice is coming from much closer than where he last saw her standing. If he turns, he's sure he'll find that she hasn't moved. "In the alpha timeline, your lives only intersected once, and that was many perigees before your world was destroyed. And this adult was never a Sgrub player. She does not exist in any dream bubbles, except as a part of your own memories."

"I can only offer you my best guess, but if you consider my aspect and the fact that I have witnessed the results of thousands upon thousands of parallel timeframes, I think you will agree that such a guess is a very near thing to a certainty."

"Fine," Karkat says. "Great, sure. Thank you for that sponge-expanding prologue to what I really hope will be the 'yes' or the 'no' next regurgitated up your meal tube. Lalonde can sit alone and rhythmically slam a liquid filled metal cylinder against her human bone bulge. I am obviously standing next to the fucking _Empress_ of this shit."

"The Sylph, as it happens," the ghost corrects, and the flat pleasantness of her tone deepens briefly with pride.

"If I were to gamble," the ghost says, "an activity which I did not pursue in my lifetime, although I have reason to believe I would have been very skilled at it, I would bet that yes, she is dead. My best guess is that she died slowly and in extreme pain, just as did every other member of your species. And many sweeps later, that the dust of what had been her bones was crushed in the explosion that formed the green sun. Perhaps some energy from their destruction has been emitted as a photon or two that are now lighting the way to your current destination."

"But does that answer help you?" the ghost says.

Across the window, the hive block, the other Karkat's memories, the brightest seams of the adult's jacket and skirt appear to glow green themselves. The adult runs her fingers through his hair again, petting him. Karkat watches himself close his eyes, accept her touch. He wills himself to rally and bite at her wrist, but the boy behind the glass doesn't even struggle away from her palm.

Of course, this is the closest thing to comfort left to him now that the adult has caught him. What scraps she offers him as a joke. And Karkat remembers what it means to be desperate for even that.

"No," the ghost says, agreeably, as if Karkat has responded obediently to her cue. "Because you can't truly start to recover without understanding that your attacker is not a blank silhouette, or an unthinking representation of the danger an adult troll represents. This is not the case. She was an individual person who was fully responsible for the results of her actions. She was a bully who took her greatest pleasure in utilizing her limited but significant social power to cause harm to those even less favored than herself. On my world, it would have been unthinkable for one of a higher cast to behave in such a manner to those underneath us, but on yours that type of cruelty was encouraged and rewarded."

The adult rotates her shoulder. The shoulder is attached to the arm that is currently digging inside Karkat's pants, pulling at his bulge or seedflap or ass. Karkat's entire torso twists up. His hands are in front of him now, palms down against the adult's forearm, but he's only bracing himself, not pushing her away. There's nothing left in him that hasn't given up.

The ghost is still talking, and every word still grates along the inside of Karkat's skull. "And how can you heal, without first accepting that what happened to you was wrong?"

He's had enough. Karkat spins to her, forcing the window back behind his shoulders. "Oh my god, stop fucking doing that!" he says.

The ghost pauses mid syllable. The black tip of her tongue is visible in the gap between her fangs and cerulean painted lips. "What am I doing?"

For a moment, it seems like she offers him an uncertain, shaky smile, but then Karkat notices that _he's_ the one shaking. His chest is heaving. He's breathing too fast. He is either angry or panicking, and whichever chest-squeezing emotion he's landed on strengthens when Karkat realizes he can't tell.

"Talking to me like we're," _pale_ , Karkat almost says, but he can't manage the word. "Friends."

She blinks again, slow and careful and he can hear the scrape of her eyelids over blank ghost eyes. She's facing him, or she's facing the window behind him, and Karkat doesn't know which version of him she's watching. Or if there's any true difference.

"No," the ghost says, "I suppose we're not. Although I was friends with someone very much like you, or at least very much like someone you could have been. And it might be that I feel a sense of familiarity that I haven't earned, after I've observed so much of your life--"

"Holy ass squelching fuck, who said you could do that," Karkat says, and _good_ , it turns out that the hot burn in his chest is anger after all. "You need to keep your voyeuristic pan tendrils out of my memories, and that includes the ones bobbing around in horrorterror spit bubbles. All that nonsense spilling from your word hole, how did you never get schoolfed on the definition of _privacy._ "

The ghost only falters for a moment. "Okay," she says. "I understand how, as someone unfamiliar with this form of existence, you might see an uninvited guest as a violation. But the memories contained in these dream bubbles are of events that have happened somewhere in the branching timelines of paradox space. They are simply facts. Can you really claim that they belong solely to you?"

"Yes!" Karkat snarls. "They are _my_ facts, which makes them none of your fucking business. And you think that you know me? Well, I know who you're supposed to be, too."

"There's no one I'm _supposed_ to be," the ghost says. "My name is--"

"Wow! It's like I was gabbing to myself when I said that I do not care." Karkat says.

He says, "Here's a new simple fact for your aural spirals to fondle! Your descendant inherited the gene that made her incapable of keeping her howl gash sealed, probably even if Maryam had stabbed her repeatedly through the mouth curtains with a needle and seam line like I kept fucking asking. And when Vriska heard that I had to sort out two skittering cerulean bite globs, she read me pages and pages of inane, ancient prattling. Would you like to make a best fucking guess to whose inane, ancient prattling it was?"

"If I was willing to invite _another_ doomed Aradiabot to punch me in the cartilage nub for crimes against pan function, I would have done Alternia a favor and pulped you for grub sauce right there on the meteor."

"I know who you are," Karkat says, and _now_ who has the lead in the hypocrite horrolympics, event of being inappropriately pale. "You're the biggest bitch of _anyone_."

The ghost has waited happily for him to stop talking. Of course she's interested now that the subject of conversation has turned to _herself_.

"Yes, I'm familiar with Mindfang's exploits," she says. And she says her own name like she had said the name of the adult troll currently in Karkat's remembered hive. Like she has recently read a story about a troll fascinating _for_ her sins, and yearns to begin a creepy ghoul book discussection club. "But I assure you, I myself have never abused my psychic abilities."

"Is that right?" Karkat says. "Then what was that crap about being one person spread across every timeline, or does it only apply to people who aren't psychotic spider assholes. You can wrap your _healing_ in nettle weed and use it as a suppository! Get the fuck away from me. From _every_ me!"

The ghost crosses her arms and glares at a neighbouring hive, empty and memory-hazy. The silver copy of his sign she's wearing as a fashion bauble doesn't shift on her chest, but Karkat thinks it would if she remembered the motions of frustration. Because Karkat isn't listening to her. He _won't_.

When she looks back at him, however, she's wearing her gentle, fond smile. No offense taken, however much was meant. "All right. If it will _help_ ," the ghost says. "I'll leave you alone with yourself."

Karkat's about to yell at her again, because what the hell is that supposed to mean, but then there's a moment where the surrounding sky and lawnring does the opposite of expose itself as flat projection. It goes _deep_. Parallel angles swerve suddenly away from each other, and composite objects reveal themselves as optical illusion, components existing on different planes. In the cracks within a slab of stone, vast tentacles writhe in darkness, very far away.

The ghost takes a step forward and is gone. The dream bubble _thrums_ back into stability, like a ripple passing from an elastic sheet.

For a while, Karkat doesn't move. He stands and watches the space in front of him, unconvinced the ghost won't return to the front of reality. But minutes pass, and he's still alone. His anger sits in his throat, awkward and too large to swallow.

The neighborhood remains exactly as he remembers it, although the other hives are silent and dark. The stars are bright in the hours before moonrise. Karkat recognizes the barrel section on the constellation of the death-ray flamethrower gun, setting in the north, which places this memory in early second autumn.

It's a good season. The air will be cooling and the nights will be getting longer, although there'll be daylight to avoid for perigees yet. Karkat can almost smell... and as soon as he thinks it he _does_. The sweet smell of distant corpseweed blooms, carried over the breeze.

He could bide here until evening. He could sink to the ground and wait for the dream bubble to fade out around him. Rest his back against the still-warm wall of his hive, and just _not think_ about what's happening behind it, about who he's sharing the dream bubble with. It's already happened. It's nothing he can _change_.

Karkat squeezes his eyes shut. A thin line of liquid spills from the corner of each, and Karkat wipes them with his sleeve. "Fuck!" he announces into the backdrop of sky, but there's nothing there to answer him. And this bubble is too big for the weird inverted echo some of them have, where his voice runs into itself from behind, having made it all the way around a tiny encapsulated world.

Here, the curse simply vanishes.

When Karkat turns, he finds the same scene behind the window. The adult's hand is deeper inside his pants, like she's forced the clasp open, but Karkat thankfully can't make out what _precisely_ she's poking at. She leans in to say something that, insulated by the glass, Karkat can't hear, but the other version of himself shudders.

The adult laughs. Muted or not, Karkat knows the shake of her shoulders. Then she licks a thick, sloppy line from the base to the tip of his horn.

From the outside, Karkat watches his own torso arc with inescapable pleasure. The pink light of a moon that doesn't exist in his own remembered sky falls through the window, turning the mutant tear lines under his eyelids an even brighter red. The lines are starting to dry. He must have no tears left.

The adult pulls a few inches away, and the other Karkat settles deeper into her grasp like a slowly deflating bladder ball. He turns his neck to the side with a careful balance, as though his head was a hugely difficult burden, and looks out from his side of the window. He meets Karkat's stare with blank and dead white eyes.

Karkat had expected this. But matching his own gaze, Karkat was waiting for the familiar roil of disgust he feels every time he's forced to look at the stubby, ugly _joke_ he always finds waiting for him in the mirror.

And yes, that's an undercurrent, but it's not more than a sharp twist in his abdomen, easily disregarded. Maybe it's that the other troll's hair lists to the opposite side from Karkat's reflection, or that his eyes are a blanked out white that will never turn to vivid red, but Karkat doesn't feel the surge of hate he usually reserves for his alternate selves.

His rage is not aimed at this ghost, although he's still angry. Karkat wants to rend the world apart with his claws. Because it's not _fair_.

There's a rush of shame as soon as he thinks it. Maybe the Karkat across the silicate plate gets a pass, but he isn't going to miss calling _himself_ out on his own wiggler naivete.

But it's _not_ fair. The other boy has never spoken, truly _spoken_ , with his lusus, has never cut down his enemies with Troll Will Smith's signature sickle, has never led a team into battle against Derse's Black King and found _victory_...

There are pounding noises now, loud as thunderstrikes or as the Black King's grotesquely heavy footsteps, filtered through Karkat's recollection. But they are distant and Karkat ignores them...

His other self has never outlived his own universe, or watched impotently as his friends ripped each other to tatters, or wrapped his fingers around a quadrantmate's palm.

So how can any timeline expect him to deal with an adult troll. It's not _fucking_ fair.

The adult twists to stretch out her back. Because it's true, Karkat knows. She has personally taught him. Holding a position for that long gets fucking uncomfortable, doesn't it? She glances briefly out the window, but once again she has no reaction to the duplicate Karkat at the glass. Her ocular orbs blink through him to the night, and they're thin green rings on gold.

She is no ghost. But she's not alive either. She's not a troll at all, merely an afterimage from a dead boy's day terrors. This time, the adult is nothing but a prop for _Karkat's_ drama, but he doubts that even Dave Strider would find amusement in the irony.

It should make it easier, knowing that the adult is not real. But she's not real like the ground, solid beneath Karkat's feet, or the texture of the hive wall against his fingers. Or the stripe of saliva on horn, still glittering in pink hued moonlight, which Karkat is sure he could feel on his own horn if he stopped remembering not to.

The adult moves sharply against her captive's body. She grinds her crotch hard into the angle of his hip, and when he glances down and away from the window, there's a staleness to his misery that makes Karkat wonder exactly how long he's been trapped here, playing this memory on repeat.

And why the fuck would anyone ever pick _this_ incident out of their panframe for a review.

Except Karkat has no idea how long this timeline lasted, how many perigees or how many _sweeps_ the adult had held him for. What if his memories get _worse_. Than _this_.

For this ghost of himself, and for the parallel ghost Karkats from an infinite variety pack selection of timelines where he didn't annihilate his entire species instead. And all of them waiting in dream bubbles at the edge of paradox space, like a minefield he'll be playing kickskull over every time he falls asleep, or the asteroid passes too close.

And still, after they've reached the humans' new session, waiting there. Forever.

Just because Karkat's past self was careless enough to get noticed by an adult.

"Sorry," he mouths into the glass. But the dead boy has his eyes shut and his head bowed, and he does not see.

Karkat steps away. The night has changed around him. Alternia's stars are gone, replaced by a sky the color of a rustblood's veins. A dark, many tentacled mountain gallops across the horizon, and there's a shadow above it that might be a dragon's wing in profile.

The spider ghost's presence must have been keeping the memory bubble stable somehow. And Karkat's thoughts drift to other spidertrolls of his nubthumping acquaintance, and the hive nearest his is displaced by The Land of Maps and Treasure's strange green vegetation. His brain must be trying to open a memo on an internal Fruity Rumpus Asshole Factory board, and the topic is all the places he could be instead. But when has Karkat ever listened to that whiny idiot?

Karkat walks to the front of his hive. His door sits in the middle of the wall, and it's dull gray and only slightly dented. Here, Karkat hasn't yet set off any explosions, or had an ogre with fairy wings and his own lusus's claws rip it in half and try to mash his head between the pieces.

He doesn't know what will happen once he goes through. Maybe his presence will be enough to snap his other self out of his pre-scripted hell, or maybe Karkat will be able to fight her off. He's climbed the rungs of his echeladder like an Imperial scout clambering to shove a flag into a mountain of alien beast shit. It has to be possible. Or maybe he can simply transport them into a happier scenario.

He'll have to think of one first.

Karkat reaches his hand to the entrance handle. It isn't locked from _his_ side. He opens the door. And he opens his eyes. He's suddenly floating, limbs made sluggish by thick gel. The air above him is sour, the reek of alchemized sopor slime that has never been enough to anchor him within his own head.

It takes Karkat long minutes to realize he's woken up, and that this isn't just the best memory he has to offer.


End file.
